


the ways we envision the worlds that we want

by harryhotspur



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teachers, Child Death regarding Booker's backstory, Dual Point of View, M/M, Nicky works in Paediatric Intensive Care, Nurse!Nicky, Past Nicky / OMC, Primary School Teacher!Joe, Recovery, Slice of Life, brief Joe/OMC, discussion of medical stuff, the inherent romanticism of falling in love with strangers on public transport
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:49:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29445096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harryhotspur/pseuds/harryhotspur
Summary: In which Nicky is a staff nurse trying to put his life back together after an unexpected breakup and Joe is a primary school teacher feeling overwhelmed by his ever-increasing workload. They start to see each other most days on their commute. Gradually, both of them begin to fall for each other from afar.After all, you don't talk to people on the bus.However, the world has other plans for them.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 130
Kudos: 201





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic has been a long time coming. While it is currently a WIP it's all outlined and around half-written. This is quite a personal fic, so feels a little like sending my child to school for the first time. I really hope you all enjoy it. 
> 
> Once again thank you to [Mags](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieMorality/pseuds/OldMagpie) and [Meh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mehmehs/pseuds/aglassfullofhappiness) for the beta work. Thank you to Polar, Astra, Dani, yu_gin, Soa and the whole rest of the mer-fam for cheer-reading and all your endless support. 
> 
> Title is from [Bright Cloud](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsx-8K7Xm4o) by Nana Grizol.
> 
> The ever lovely Polar did a [edit](https://alaskandawn.tumblr.com/post/644911984151805952/i-can-finally-post-this-slightly-spoilery-edit) for this fic. It's slightly spoilery until after chapter 4 but please please check it out and give it some love <3
> 
> Tags will be updated with additional warnings / info as each chapter uploads.

Nicolò di Genova always said he believed in destiny. He believed in a greater power present the world leading him to some goal, to some place, to some time where everything would feel _right._ When he was younger, that force directing his path was always God. He found a strange kind of comfort in believing everything was predetermined. Once he’d reached his early twenties and his faith had waned and changed somewhat he still maintained that deep, underlying belief that ultimately everything happened for a reason.

Now, standing under a flickering street lamp with his hands in his pockets against the December chill, waiting for a bus which, according to the live timetable on his phone, was already three minutes late; Nicky truly believed destiny was playing a cruel trick on him. If it had led him here at twenty-nine, single as of a few months ago from the man he had spent the majority of his twenties with, in a still unpacked studio flat on the _less nice_ side of the city all while becoming rapidly reacquainted with ready meals - he wanted to have a long, hard talk with the person directing his life.

Nicky looked at the timetable on his phone again. The bus was now four minutes late. He zoomed in on the live map to see the little red flag illustrated with the bus number sitting unmoving two streets away and sat down on the cold bench. His work shoes dug uncomfortably into his back through the thin material of his rucksack and his old boots were starting to leak through from the slush which pooled in a brownish pile at the edge of the curb. Nicky looked at the frayed laces and made a mental note to replace them soon; to get a nice pair this time instead of getting the cheap and easy option. 

He creaked his neck from side to side and turned his attention to the illuminated poster on the side of the bus stop advertising a new breakfast sandwich. _Start Your Day The Right Way_ , it exclaimed in bold letters. Nicky's stomach growled. He reached in his pocket for a cereal bar, opened it, took a bite and wished it was the giant sandwich staring at him. The instant porridge pot he had for his first break and the soup for the second didn't fill him with joy. Tinned soup was truly the most depressing choice of meal for a thirteen hour shift but - as he increasingly thought now - it would have to do. 

He kept an eye on the road as he ate. Eventually he saw the lights of the bus pulling up and stuck his arm down to flag it down. 

"Return to the children's hospital," Nicky said to the driver, stepping into the booth. 

"That'll be four-fifty, mate," the driver replied, not even bothering to look at him.

Nicky placed his card to the reader, waited until it beeped and walked up the aisle of the bus. It smelled of piss and stale smoke, barely masked by cleaning products and the heady mix of deodorants and perfumes from its early morning travellers. As Nicky found a seat, he scanned around his fellow passengers. His eyes came to rest on one man in particular who sat next to the window. He had tight curls peeking out of the edge of his beanie and kind brown eyes. With an easy confidence, the man flashed a smile at Nicky as he walked past. Nicky supposed he was attractive. He found other men attractive now out of a strange feeling of spite - as if he was saying to himself: _look what else is out there for you_. But no - it wasn't the man's kind eyes, or his frankly _very_ cute face which drew Nicky's attention; it was the two large bags for life on the seat next to him - inexplicably filled with what looked like at least a dozen loaves of bread.

Nicky glanced over at Man-With-Bread as he took his seat at the back of the bus. He stared out of the window, puzzling with the big question of the morning:

_Why did one man need so much bread?_

The story of exactly how Yusuf - 'Joe' (since his time at Cambridge a decade ago) al-Kaysani - came to be on a bus with a frankly ridiculous amount of Tesco Value Medium Soft White Sliced began with him being awoken by a frantic five am phone call from the school kitchen assistant. 

Earlier that morning, he lay blearily in the dark while Marjorie delivered a convoluted story about how _somebody_ (strongly implied to be that-new-caretaker-who-just-didn't-know how-to-do-his-job) had left the school kitchen door open and _s_ _omehow_ rats had got to the bread. Because Yusuf was Yusuf he said: _of course I'll go get some more bread_. So he got up, skipped a shower in favour of a quick wash in front of the sink, brushed some water through his curls with his fingers in a vague attempt to tame them, and sprayed his full body with a little too much deodorant. He grabbed his bags, put the books he had marked the night before into his satchel and headed out the door.

Joe lived in the suburbs so it was only a short walk to the twenty-four hour Tescos. The bright fluorescent lights burned his still half-asleep eyes as he shovelled loaf after loaf into his two baskets. He wasn't sure what the usual bread order for the breakfast club was but he settled on: better to have too much, than too little. With his haul and an additional can of cold coffee, he headed to the checkouts.

"Hungry?" the young man behind the till asked with a wry smile as he ran the loaves through the till. 

"I just had a real craving for toast," Yusuf replied with a smile. He put in his pin number, paid and corralled them all into a couple of bags for life.

While waiting at the bus interchange he had the vague amusing thought that he must look funny - a sleepy man travelling at barely six thirty in the morning with a unusual amount of bread. The can of coffee was cold against his hands, definitely not the best choice on a freezing December morning but he desperately needed it. He drained the last of it as his bus pulled up. Joe’s stop was one of the first so he usually had the pick of the seats. Once he entered the bus, Joe chose a seat near the front, placed his haul on the seat next to him, and turned his music on.

As the bus moved slowly through the still dark city streets, Joe leaned back against the headrest of his seat. He was tired; more tired than he had been in a while. The bus turned sharply around the corner and Joe reached out with one arm to stop the loaves from careering all over the floor.

He checked his phone and saw a text from Marjorie which just read: _thx Joe_ . He smiled, imagining her storming around the school kitchen in her green tabard and hairnet, putting the world to rights before the majority of it had even woken up yet. At least getting the bread would mellow her a little. Reaching out to save the loaves from another corner, Joe thumbed his Whatsapp open to text his mum: _Good Morning_. It didn’t take a minute for his phone to vibrate in his pocket as she replied with: _Morning Yusuf - very cold this morning - think little Bart’s feet are freezing - he wasn't too happy about going out this morning. Hope work goes well_. Yusuf smiled at the phone, imagining his mum walking along the canal to the park dressed in her winter coat, throwing a ball for Bart - a wolfhound who couldn’t be classified as ‘little’ at all. He sent off a quick: _Thanks - have a good day, I'll call you later_ , and locked his phone again.

It was cold, colder than it had been for a while, and condensation covered the windows of the bus, dripping down in lazy tracks and catching the light of the street lamps and signs. Due to the steam, Joe couldn't see outside. He felt cocooned in this hunk of metal, anonymous and - for once - deeply alone. He longed to get to the school, to the warmth of the kitchen, to the children running in to eat their toast and jam in the breakfast club. And then the register, carpet time and on to phonics. It was his routine, comforting in it's beautiful mundanity - at least the kids meant that every day was a little different.

The bus pulled up to one of the stops and Joe looked up as a man entered. He didn’t recognise the guy, but he immediately noticed him. A battered-looking backpack was slung over one of his arms and even through his winter coat, Joe could make out the broad span of his shoulders. The man's eyes scanned around the bus looking for a seat - they were blue or green or some kind of mixture between the two. Joe smiled at him, realising he had held eye contact a bit too long. He was _very_ cute after all, in a kind of renaissance statue type of way - all nose, his features all edges but with an unexpected softness rounding them out. It was early; Yusuf was doing a good deed; he was _allowed_ to indulge in some eye candy. The man's reflexive smile back at him was almost imperceptible. Then his expression shifted slightly and Joe saw his eyeline move to the bags for life next to him - filled with an _unholy_ amount of bread. Beautiful-Nose-Man raised an eyebrow as a puzzled expression passed across his face. Time seemed to stop momentarily as Yusuf looked to him, then the bread, then back to the man again, their eyes locking for a millisecond. The man, also wearing headphones, let out a small confused _eh_ which Joe assumed he didn't realise was audible. Then, time started again. What-Colour-Even-Are-His-Eyes-Man walked past up the aisle of the bus and took a seat a few rows behind.

The bus turned another corner, and Yusuf reached out for his bread again. He wanted to look back and cast his eyes over the stranger again but he resisted. After all; they probably wouldn't see each other again. The image of the alluring Bus-Man would fade like all of the other handsome strangers he saw on his commute - another missed connection running away from him like the condensation on the window. 

Yusuf al-Kaysani (and his bread) probably wouldn't even pass across Bus-Man's thoughts again today.

  
  
  


Man-With-Bread did pass across Nicky's thoughts again that day; in fact he found it almost impossible to stop thinking about him. 

Well, _mostly_ his large amount of bread.

"I just don't understand why he needed so _much_ ," Nicky said, leaning back on his chair in front of the computer cart. He shifted uncomfortably - his scrub top had a rough patch on the label at the neck which made his skin crawl. He made a mental note to cut it off when he next went to the bathroom. Andromache Sythica leaned over his shoulder and looked at the results on his screen. Nicky liked it when Andy was the consultant on call for the unit, they'd been friends for a while and it was nice to know they could have a laugh in the rare quiet moments. Especially now, Nicky appreciated those times more than ever.

"Nicky," she began, as she leaned closer and studied the results on the screen. "You always focus on the weirdest things, y'know?"

"It was a lot of bread, Andy. I just keep thinking, what was he going to do with it?"

"Maybe he has ducks?"

"Ducks?" Nicky questioned. "I don't think ducks are meant to eat bread...” Due to the bus route, Bread-Man could only live as far out as the suburbs and he was heading to the city centre. Not really an ideal place to keep ducks. “Where would he keep them?" he continued. 

Somebody cleared their throat behind him and Nicky looked back to see Quynh, in her navy blue sister's scrubs. She tapped her handover with her pen as she raised an eyebrow and smiled at both him and Andy. Her gestures said wordlessly: _Please hurry the fuck up, we have ten more patients to see and I have at least twenty essential phone calls to make_. She was always harsher when Andy was on call, in an attempt at exuding pure unbridled professionalism when working with her wife. Taking the hint, Nicky turned back to the screen. "Fluid balance is looking good," Nicky continued, circling his mouse around a figure on his chart and turning the conversation back to what they were actually meant to be talking about. "We're off the inotropes now, starting to wean sedation, hopefully looking at extubation later on in the afternoon."

"All looking good," Andy replied. "Progressing as expected."

She walked over to the side of the bed, and silently touched the hand of the child who lay there. She said nothing but stood there for a few moments and then left the bedside.

"I've put some potassium up, it was low this morning. Can - uh..." Nicky turned to the other woman, standing behind another computer cart on wheels, typing as Andy spoke. He didn't recognise her.

"Nile," she said, filling in his blank. "The new SHO." American, Nicky thought - young, very pretty. Looked competent - unlike the last one.

"She downplays herself," Andy said, walking back next to her. "She'll be a junior registrar by the end of the year."

Nile smiled softly and continued typing as Andy relayed the plan to her.

"Make a note of their potassium replacement Nile, we'll monitor that." She said, then signaled to the empty chair by the bedside. "Parents?"

"Mum went for a coffee," Nicky said. "Donna said she didn't sleep a wink all through her night shift. Bless her."

This morning, Nicky had brought her one of the frankly _shockingly bad_ cups of patient coffee, and two slices of toast. They'd talked a bit and he'd tried to reassure her, but - as he knew far too well by now, he had been a Staff Nurse too long, worked in PICU too long - there was only so much reassurance you could offer in these situations. He’d noticed her becoming more fidgety and stressed - telltale signs of somebody needing a break; just needing a few minutes to catch their breath away from the situation - however he knew how reluctant parents were to leave without some prompting. He’d told her about the nice lattes in the cafeteria downstairs, and the small garden in the courtyard between the children's outpatients and the wards, and suggested she take half an hour to get a coffee and some food. He'd reassured her that everything was going to be fine, everything was stable and that she could take a few minutes if she needed it. She had smiled at that, kissed her daughter on the head and taken herself off slowly to get some air for a minute.

"I'll catch her for an update later then," Andy said, turning back to the small gaggle of the ward round. "And I'll catch you later on your break if I can, Nicky," Andy winked at him. "Find out more about this mysterious bread man..."

With that; Andy turned on her heel and the ward round all followed her and Quynh as they moved onto the next bed.

Nicky inputted his vital signs observations for the hour and stood up to get his patient’s drugs out of the bedside locker to be countersigned for ten o’clock. 

The morning passed - as not all days did - relatively slowly and with no surprises.

Andy did catch him on his break later, most times she said that she didn't manage to but today he got lucky, and when he walked into the break room she was standing by the water boiler, filling up a cafetière. Nicky motioned to it and said:

"Pays to be a doctor, doesn't it?"

Andy looked up from depositing another spoonful of coffee into the pot.

"Don't be a dick, Nicky," she said, adding yet another scoop. "I have to stand in for Rishaan at the Home Ventilation meeting and it's going to be..." Andy let out a deep sigh. "Boring as shit to be honest.”

She filled the pot with water and placed the lid on, leaning against the counter as it brewed. Nicky went to his bag and retrieved his can of soup, poured it into a bowl and put it into the microwave.

"Quynh will be out to get you tonight if you don't look interested."

Andy laughed softly and moved out of the way as Nicky ran his spoon under the boiling water. 

"Oh, I'll make sure I look interested."

The microwave beeped and Nicky retrieved his soup. He sat down in a chair facing Andy, who still leaned on the counter. "Tell me about Bread-Man," Andy said. 

"I don't know," Nicky began. "He just had all this bread and...” He paused. “I don't know. It seemed weirder at six am this morning." 

"A true mystery," Andy said with a snort. "Was he cute though?" 

Nicky laughed and it came out a little sadder than he intended. 

"A bit," he lied. In actual fact, Man-With-Bread was probably the cutest person he had seen in a while. "Although I feel I am only finding people attractive out of spite now." 

Andy laughed. "I think only you could find people attractive out of spite, Nicky." Her tone softened a little. "You are okay though, right? Settling into the new place?" 

Nicky nodded. 

"I'm doing better. Good and bad days to be honest." 

"Hmm, it will be. New place will be good though - a fresh start."

Nicky didn't want to tell Andy that all his stuff was still in boxes, looking like frightfully little after six years of shared possessions. He didn't want to tell her that he'd spent two hours on the day when he first moved in scrubbing black mould off the shower and then passed straight out on the bed without even making it up. He saw her looking at him, and knew that she knew. 

"You working the weekend?" Andy added.

"Sunday night." 

"Okay, Quynh and I will come around on Saturday and help you unpack. Just ask, Nicky. We are always willing to help." 

Nicky exhaled deeply, picking at his soup. It was bland and the conversation didn't add to his appetite. He knew Andy was there for him; he'd been there for her when Quynh had had her accident. He'd spent many nights sitting with her in the spare room of his old house, waiting for phone calls, Owain asleep in the next room. 

"Thanks, I do appreciate it." 

Andy looked at him with a note of concern in her eyes, as if she was unsure whether or not to tell him something. 

"I saw Owain in ED by the way. I thought about tripping him but he was intubating a difficult airway at the time." Andy started to push the plunger on the cafetiere slowly. "So I thought it would be unprofessional." 

Nicky sighed - even thinking about Andy trying to trip Owain made something small ache at the back of his chest. 

"Please don't trip Owain," he replied, trying to sound jovial but failing miserably. 

It had been three months since Owain had said he wanted to leave. Well; he wanted _Nicky_ to leave. He was bored apparently - the relationship had 'run its course' and he 'hated feeling like he had his full life planned out ahead of him'. Nicky had _liked_ that. Life was quiet and they were happy _-_ at least _he_ thought they were. 

Owain had said he would leave, that Nicky could stay in the house for a bit. Nicky hadn't wanted to and said he would go instead. And so eight years of his life ended with him, holdall over his back - filled with god knew what, probably everything he didn't need and nothing he actually did - trying to hold it together in the back of a taxi on the way to Andy and Quynh's. Owain had admitted later that there had been somebody else. _Not for long_ , he had said, as if that fact made it better. 

"I'd have tripped him if it wasn't a difficult airway," Andy said, with a bit more sincerity than was necessary. With that, the phone sitting in a pocket on her lanyard started to buzz and she reached down to answer it. "Gotta go I think”, she said. Then: "hello it's Andy." She picked up the coffee and mouthed 'Saturday' at Nicky, and left the break room, muttering noises to indicate she was listening to the person on the end of the phone. 

Two more of his colleagues came in for their break and Nicky found himself an unwilling participant in a deep-dive conversation about some reality TV programme he hadn't watched. As the small talk continued around him, he found his eyes drawn to the loaves of bread next to the microwaves. 

Damn - he still _really_ wanted to know why that man had all that bread. 

  
  
  


Joe, meanwhile, knew exactly the reason for all the bread - he just wished there was less of it as he filled the toaster with slice after slice before passing it over to Marjorie who spread the slices with butter and jam. He ran the breakfast club most mornings, one of the only teachers who had volunteered. Booker did sometimes, but less so during the last few months.

"Morning, Mr Al Kaysani," came a small voice from the other side of the hatch. Joe looked down to see Carter, one of the children in his class, looking small and waif-like in an oversized jumper which he assumed was his older brother's.

"Morning, Carter," Joe looked at the clock, it was quarter past eight, Carter usually wasn't here until just before the bell at least and he very rarely came to the breakfast club.

"You're up early, Carter," he said. "You want toast?"

He nodded, looking up at him with wide brown eyes.

"Mum wasn't up early…" he said, kicking his feet slightly. Joe could tell by his eyes that something was bothering him. "Jason says she's not well, she likes to wear her pyjamas all day now. I wanted to wear my pyjamas to school, but Jason wouldn't let me." Carter stuck his tongue out at the end part of his sentence. Joe looked across the hall to see Jason standing with his small group of friends only wearing his polo-shirt.

"He's very sensible, your brother," Joe said, trying to hide that his heart was breaking a little. It always did, when he knew his kids were going through hard times. "We can't wear pyjamas to school."

"I'd wear pyjamas everyday," Carter continued. "Like mum - she's no fun now though, she doesn't want to play. Jason says she's tired but I've never met _anybody_ who is tired all the time."

Joe smiled sadly at him, he had sat down with their mum after a meeting with their social worker last week, she was tall, too thin, barely holding it together. They had drank shite dishwatery school tea together and Joe sat beside her with a box of tissues, unsure what to say, unsure how to approach things.

"Sometimes grown-ups get tired," he tried to explain to Carter in a way he would understand. "Sometimes, grown-ups, like your mum feel very sad, and all that sadness can make you very tired, too tired to smile, or play, or enjoy anything fun really."

Joe could see the little cogs working in Carter's brain.

"And she'll be sad forever - Jason says she will be."

"No," Joe said, feeling as if somebody had just stabbed a knife between his ribs. Marjorie tapped on the counter and cleared her throat, standing with her knife primed and ready over the industrial tub of butter. Joe looked Carter in the eyes, added another slice of toast to the plate and passed it along the counter. "No, it won't be forever." 

Carter smiled at him and moved along the counter to get his toast from Marjorie. Joe watched him go, holding his plate of toast with the too long sleeves of his school jumper which made his hands look like tiny paws. He turned back to the queue and smiled at the next child: 

“You want some toast, Kaya?” he said. 

The morning breakfast club went off without incident and at half eight, Joe finished up serving and headed to his classroom to set up for the day. On the way, he bumped into Booker (Sébastien, to those he wasn’t close to, Mr Le Livre to his class) coming out of the staff toilet, drying his hands on his trousers. 

“Alright, mate.” he said. He looked thinner than he had been at the start of the year, dark bags under his eyes and his ash blonde hair a little lanky and greasy as it flopped over his face. Joe noticed a slight tremor in his left hand, more pronounced than it had been a few months ago.” 

“Yeah,” Joe replied. “You got everything for the Key Stage 2 football training tonight?” 

“Fucking _shit,_ ” Booker swore, lowering his voice to almost silence on the _shit_ and flashing a smile as a group of children walked past. “I left my sports stuff at the caravan.” 

He didn’t call it _home_ yet, just the caravan. Since his divorce at the end of the last school year, Booker had been living in what had been his family caravan around ten miles up the coast. Joe knew he was having a rough time, his youngest son had died around New Year - meningitis, just awful. Even thinking about it made Joe’s heart hurt deep in his chest. Booker returned to school in the Easter Term, thinner and more disheveled. His marriage was over by May half-term. Booker had been different after his son’s death, more withdrawn, more reserved, but after the breakdown of his marriage, he seemed to sink deeper and deeper into himself. Sometimes, Joe looked into his eyes and just for a second was met with the gaze of a drowning man. 

“I have some spare tracksuit bottoms in my classroom, I usually have a few pairs in case I get muddy - you’ll probably fit into them Book.” 

“Ah, that would be great Joe, thanks,” Booker replied, trying to smooth out his creased shirt. 

“Anytime.”

Joe always tried to help Booker with practical solutions. Book wasn’t a talker, wasn’t somebody who liked to sit down and talk about his problems, he had much more of that masculine grin and bear it repression about him. That worried Joe, he was generally quite open but knew with Booker, he just had to let him open up when he was ready. For now, he would try to provide practical support. The week after he left what was his family home, Joe had helped him pack up his car with his possessions and unpack the boxes into the small space. As the sun set over the static caravans and the gulls wheeled, screaming in the air, they had both sat on battered deckchairs and listened to the distant sound of the sea. Booker had opened a can of Kronenbourg, drained half of it without taking a breath and muttered: 

“I don’t know how I am going to do this”. 

Joe had sat up straighter, a bit taken aback by Booker opening up. 

“You will,” he had said matter of factly. “You will Book.” 

Booker had drained the rest of the can and threw it towards the rubbish bag hooked on the caravan door, it’d missed and bounced off into the darkness with a clang. He had closed his eyes and they sat in silence for a while. Joe wasn’t a fan of silence. Booker was - so Joe let him have that. If Book wasn’t going to open up emotionally, Joe was at least going to try to be there for him physically. 

They both started to walk towards their classrooms to get ready to prepare for the day ahead. Just before Booker dipped into his classroom door, Joe called out to him:

“You coming to watch the football this weekend? Arsenal and West Ham I think on Saturday?” 

“Yeah, your turn right? I’ll get the bus down.” 

They usually went to one of two pubs, one in town on the riverfront or the one near the sea next to Booker’s new home. They could watch the matches at home - but Booker didn’t have Sky anymore and Joe liked to get out and enjoy the atmosphere of watching with others. It had become their little routine over the last few months. Joe appreciated it and he knew Booker did too. 

He watched Booker disappear through his own classroom door and walked into his classroom to prepare for the day. As he arranged the worksheets for each table he thought back to the man on the bus this morning. He was cute, in a character actor type of way, with the kind of face which made you want to sketch it from every angle to understand deeply the way his features moved around different expressions. Joe sighed and adjusted the chairs around the small tables so they were straight. It had been too long; he was starting to find the male voice on Phonics Wizards kind of _alluring_ \- a sure sign that he _needed_ to get some. Bus-Man would have been a good candidate. But he most likely wouldn’t even be gay and even if he was - he had just been a random stranger on public transport - their paths would never cross again. Joe wiped down the whiteboard, scrubbing furiously where his PPA cover had written on it in Sharpie. Maybe he should try Grindr again even though it would just end in disappointment. But maybe a quick casual fuck would get rid of the persistent buzzing feeling at the back of his skull. 

He loved teaching, but some mornings as he stood at the front of his classroom looking out over the empty desks, it felt like he was standing frozen on a beach as a tidal wave loomed and rushed forward - poised and ready to crash onto the shore. 

The bell rang, Joe inhaled deeply, walked to the door and opened it to the group of children standing outside. 

“Okay, Good Morning everybody,” he said in what Booker called, his ‘Mr al-Kaysani voice’. “Line up nicely. Freddie, please stop pulling on Hakim’s bag, we don't treat our friends like that. Right everybody, come in and take your seats.” 

As each child entered, Joe greeted them. “Good morning,” he said to Freddie, Hakim, Katie, Sam S and Sam V, Carter, Jon and Johnny, Kaymen, Paris, Heather, and Tom. He had started a tradition of greeting each child with a ‘Good Morning’ in their first language. The children loved it. Phillipe and Fransiqua got a “ _Bonjour_.” Asim, Faiza, Jalila, Navid, and Zayna got “ _sabah al-khair_ ”. The rest were greeted with a mixture of _dzień dobry_ ; _labas rytas_ ; _zǎoshang hǎo_ ; _ibolachi_ ; _dobroho ranku_ ; _buongiorno_ and _shubh prabhaat_. Aya stood at the back of the line, next to her 1:1, turning a spinner around in her hands. She looked up at Joe with her big brown eyes and he could tell she wasn’t ready to speak yet this morning. He signed ‘Good morning’ to her in Makaton, she met his gaze briefly and signed back “Good Morning”, then turned her attention back to the toy in her hands. 

Once she was through the door, Joe watched them all take their seats. He took his position at the front next to the interactive whiteboard. 

“Good morning class,” he said and they all turned to face him. 

“Good morning Mr al-Kaysani,” thirty-three voices echoed back. 

And so the day began in the same way as all the schooldays before had done. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your lovely comments and kudos on the first chapter of this fic - they all really mean a lot to me. 
> 
> Please see the endnotes for a content warning for this chapter
> 
> For the fam as always <3

Nicky liked when days unfolded in the same way. He thrived on routine. Just sometimes his brain just struggled to enforce those routines. Since everything had ended with Owain, he felt he was forcing himself through the days, trying to find out what worked for him. Work, even with its spontaneity, was still familiar and comforting. However, in the evenings and on his days off he found himself sitting on his couch, staring at the TV but not really watching it; just letting the background noise fill the empty spaces in his mind. Now he was left to figure out his routines again. Small and silly things like what times did he _actually_ like to eat; what laundry detergent did he even like; how did he like to fill his days off? He had his friends of course, and his dad back in Genoa who was trying - trying so hard, bless him - to make this easier for him. But deep down, Nicky knew this was just something he had to work through. 

In the early days, when he was still trying to make sense of the big Owain-shaped hole in his life, he had walked from one end of the city to the other. He had ended up on the outskirts where the estates gave way to fields and the outlying villages beyond. Nicky stood on one of the banks, where the last houses dropped down to the fields beyond and looked down at the sprawling city. The light was fading and from the windows small lights shined out, on the network of roads tiny white and red dots snaked up and down. Nicky imagined all the people below, their lives, their loves, and suddenly felt very alone. Leaving the scene behind, he had got the bus back, crawled back into the spare bed at Andy and Quynh’s and tried not to think too much about it as he fell into a fitful sleep. 

He had jolted awake just before midnight by Quynh opening the door. Nicky sat up and turned to see her standing in the doorway, framed by the hall light behind her a cup of tea in her hand. He scrubbed his face with his palm, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Quynh walked closer to the bed, the toe of her left foot hitting the floor slightly before her heel, the most visible remnant from her accident apart from the small round scar at the bottom of her throat. Her limp came out more when she was tired and Nicky could tell by her posture she was exhausted. 

“Just came to see if you were okay,” Quynh said, sitting down next to him and passing the tea over. 

“You just got in?” Nicky asked, taking a sip from the tea. Lavender with a hint of valerian - one of Quynh’s favourites. 

“Yeah, a difficult cross-country transfer - long story.” Quynh also took a sip from her tea and exhaled. “I was asking if _you_ were okay, Nicky. You need to talk about this.” 

Nicky had thought back to his excessively long walk and the ache in the balls of his feet. He rolled his ankles under the sheets and flexed his toes. 

“I’m not, I guess - I don’t know,” he said, sadly. 

Quynh placed a hand on Nicky’s shoulder. 

“Do you remember when you first came to PICU as a student?” 

Nicky looked up at her, puzzled. 

“What does that have to do with this?” 

Quynh took another small sip of her tea and then smoothed the blanket down around Nicky’s legs. 

“You remember that day I found you in the sluice? You were stressing over some bodyweight drug conversions and had gone in there to hide and try and work them out. I can still see you, as clear as day, turning to me, wide-eyed and saying: _I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do this._ You said it so sincerely, and what did I say to you then?”

“You said I would be able to do it, that I was doing it right now,” Nicky replied. 

Quynh nodded. 

“And it’s true Nicky, you will get through this - even if it doesn’t feel like that right now. You are doing it this very second.”

With that, Quynh had stood up, squeezed his hand and fluffed his pillow up a little bit. Both of them were practical people, very empathetic and compassionate, but who did not commonly express strong emotions without fully rationalising them first. Her saying this to him meant more than Nicky could fully say. 

Quynh was right, ultimately. He was doing it. He was getting there. All throughout his life, Nicky had the dogged determination that ultimately everything would work out. Just sometimes the road was paved with broken glass rather than tarmac. But, even so, you still had to walk the path, still had to put one foot forward - face the day and keep moving. 

Seeing the handsome Man-With-Bread on the bus was one of the nicer routines which had come into his life. It seemed weird to call him that now. During his morning and sometimes on his evening commute, Nicky had never seen him with any bread again. But somehow, the name had stuck. Nicky wondered where he worked, to be travelling so early and then so late back at night. He didn’t seem to work at the hospital or wear an identifiable uniform. On the weekends he wasn’t on the bus - so he seemed to work weekdays only. From what he could see under his heavy winter coat, most days he dressed smartly, in tailored dress trousers or soft corduroys. Some days, mostly in the evening, he wore mud-stained tracksuit bottoms or shorts and long socks like a footballer. Some kind of youth worker maybe? Somebody with a day job who ran a sports club afterwards. Teacher, maybe? Nicky wasn’t sure. 

All he knew was that he looked for him on the bus now each morning and night. When he saw him bobbing his head slightly to his music, looking down and smiling at his phone or staring out the window - Nicky’s day got better. Over the last few weeks, his finding-people-attractive-only-out-of-spite feelings had started to fade. _Maybe he was getting to the point of being able to just find other people attractive again?_ He had tried casually flirting with one of the cute new Occupational Therapists. Nicky didn’t even know if he was gay but it felt like a step, a step towards _something_ , a future maybe - a small light of happiness at the end of a dark road. Still, it didn’t help shake the feeling that he had stepped off the carefully crafted map of his life and now was standing somewhere in the margins flanked by a large ‘Here Be Dragons’ sign. 

Somewhere, the small romantic at the back of his mind imagined that one-day Man-With-Bread would stand up and sit next to him on the bus. Or _some_ inexplicable and random event would bring them together - spilling coffee all over Bread-Man; tripping into Bread-Man; having to solve some unspecified crisis with Bread-Man... 

Ultimately, Nicky knew these ideas only existed in Rom-Coms. People liked to watch them because they were unrealistic. In real life, nobody found love after spilling coffee on somebody - all that would get you was second-degree burns, a hefty dry cleaning bill and the possibility of being sued. 

It didn’t mean he couldn’t dream though. He could think about Bread-Man coming over to talk to him on the bus, about taking him home, running his fingers through his curls and kissing him. Dream about Bread-Man being the secret love of his life. 

After all, dreams didn’t harm anybody...

  
  


“You need to stop day-dreaming Joe,” Booker said, half joking as he lifted his pint (second or third, Joe couldn’t remember) to his mouth and took a long gulp. “You nearly missed the goal.” 

They both sat on bar stools, straining their necks to see the match on the small screen mounted on the wall across the pub. People thronged around them, bumping them with elbows and crossing in front of them to pay for their own drinks. 

“What goal, Booker.” Joe signalled at the TV, where the goal had been missed just minutes before. “He put it over the bar.” 

“Oh so you were listening - you looked miles away, Joe.” Booker took another gulp from his beer and looked Joe dead in the eyes. “You were day-dreaming about your Bus-Man, weren’t you.” 

“No,” Joe lied. “I wasn’t.” 

Booker rolled his eyes and made a little kissy face towards him before turning his attention back to the game. It was true, Joe had been dreaming about Bus-Man since had started seeing him on his commute in the last few weeks. There was something about him which drew his gaze, maybe it was his striking features, maybe it was his blue (or green?) eyes, maybe it was the adorable backpack he wore a little too high on his shoulders. It could have been the novelty of seeing the same man on his commute. Still, he was cute. It was a welcome distraction which brightened up his mornings and evenings. 

In his mind, Joe had been slowly building a little fantasy life with Bus-Man, dreaming of them being together. He imagined it would feel to kiss Bus-Man’s lips, how it would feel to be held by him, what his voice sounded like. He’d never heard him speak, but for some reason imagined him to be from West Yorkshire. 

Joe turned his attention back to the game, although he wasn’t really watching it. It was a bit boring, both teams weren’t really playing too well. His thoughts kept him from focusing - a performance management next week, three child protection meetings, needing to make the resources for the new art curriculum. Joe took a sip of his Fanta and watched the Away team narrowly miss an own goal. Booker winced at it and Joe smiled at him. 

“They are playing worse than your Year Six class,” Joe said. 

Booker laughed at that, a deep sound hiding a small vein of sadness. 

“No, Joe,” he took another gulp of his beer, half the glass gone in one swallow. “They are playing _worse_ and, more importantly, not fighting to the death.” Booker pointed to the screen where one of the players was gesticulating angrily at the referee. “If this was my Year Sixes, Cavani would have Fernandes in a headlock, Rashford would be punching Pogba and Greenwood would keep changing positions and scoring own goals.” 

Joe laughed, imagining the chaos. It was heartwarming really. 

“They are having fun though,” Joe said. “That’s what matters.” 

Booker snorted and took another swig of his beer. 

“Least somebody is...” 

As he had been doing for about a month, Joe day-dreamed about Bus-Man again. He looked out for him in the morning and the evening. Sometimes he only saw him a couple of times a week, sometimes nearly everyday. It was a bit silly, Joe thought, how much of his mind this mysterious man had occupied. As the seasons turned from winter into spring, he wondered - was his day-dreaming trying to fill some kind of emptiness within him? He was _happy_ the way he was - alone but not alone. 

He had friends, he had a very supportive family, he had his work ( _s_ _o much work_ ), he had the kids and all the joy and stress and heartache they brought to his life, but he couldn’t help but feel little like _something_ was missing. 

Even so, Joe continued his daily routines: he marked his class’s books, prepared for his after school clubs and filled in safeguarding reports. Every week, he went to Friday Prayers with friends he had known for years. Their group had grown enough now that they rented out a small community space fortnightly. On the alternate week they all still met in Hassan and Amir’s house. They were both in their sixties and had been together since before Joe was born. Joe was sure that they had been scheming with Amina to ‘find Yusuf a nice husband’ since they’d started praying together. Every time a new single man came to pray they all fluttered around him like parental moths, making introductions, inviting them both for tea and insisting to the newcomer how much of a ‘good boy’ Yusuf was. Joe appreciated it. He’d a few nice dates with a nice man called Kamil until his work placement ended and he returned to his company’s Kabul office. They’d texted a lot after he left, video called a few times, talked abstractly about Yusuf flying over to Kabul in the half-term. However, due to the distance things had eventually fizzled out. 

He waited on the bus as the mornings and evenings slowly got lighter. On the bus, Joe looked out for Bus-Man. In the week, he went to the supermarket alone late at night and stood in front of the fridges wondering what to buy. On the weekends he went to watch the football with Booker. He went to art galleries by himself and walked around listening to the audio guides. Nearly every day he texted with his sisters, Meriem who now lived back in Tunis, Sahar - still in Rotterdam with his parents, Naima - at university in Paris. Due to his father’s business, they were always a family who had moved around. Joe felt very settled in England but, especially in the winter months, he missed their house on the outskirts of Tunis, the oranges on the tree in the garden and wandering around the Médina. On an evening, when he didn’t fall straight asleep, he lay in his king size bed and read, or watched documentaries on his iPad. All in all, those little things filled the emptiness somewhat but not completely.

In the small hours of the morning, he daydreamed about Bus-Man... 

There was a whole world out there, and even with all the meaning in his life, Joe couldn’t shake the feeling that something was passing him by.

  
  
  


Nicky also carried on through his life, gradually building his routines up again and making them truly his own. He started to cook for himself again. He made carbonara and sat and ate it on his kitchen table with the wonky leg made right with a stack of folded takeaway menus. On a clear day, he walked out to the edges of the city again and stopped to stroke one of the horses in the field on the edge of the bank. The horse bumped her head against his shoulder and nuzzled at him, looking for treats. He stroked her nose softly and watched as her eyes closed. Nicky turned around and took a deep breath. He looked back down at the city and instead of just feeling loneliness, he felt a small swell of hope. All of that was out there for him. He walked back this time, unlocked the front door of his flat, made a cup of tea and sat down on his couch. He looked around his small space. It was his - even with the black mould, the broken furniture and the shit shower. That meant something. 

Sometime towards the end of spring, he was seized with the thought that he wasn’t _lonely_ anymore, _per-se_ . For the first time in eight years, he was starting to learn how to just sit with himself. _It was a good feeling_ , Nicky thought - _it was good for him_. However, it didn’t stop him from wondering what it would be like if Bread-Man was sitting next to him on the sofa; sitting cross legged at the small kitchen table while he made carbonara and in his bed at night instead of the pillow he curled around. 

He was a dream, and like all dreams Bread-Man had that somewhat unreal quality. He was a stranger after all; everything he thought about him were just manifestations of his own projected feelings. Like a dream, Nicolo knew that if he opened his eyes - the image would fade like an old photograph bleached by the sun. 

The rest of the early spring passed with a dream-like quality as the silent crossing of Joe and Nicky’s paths continued. They both stole small glances while the other wasn’t looking, both creating fantasies and narratives of what the other man was like from a place deep within themselves. Both of them were photo negatives to each other, strips of brown; hazed and transparent squares holding within them potential for the full image to be revealed.   
  


As the buds of blossoms were just beginning to fall from the trees, Joe sat on the bus and watched Bus-Man staring at his phone. He didn’t have his headphones on as usual and sat in the window seat with his backpack on the seat next to him. Joe could only see his profile from his seat. As the bus moved through the darkened city streets, neon lights from the takeaway signs passed across his face and framed it in a multitude of colours. He was just so nice to look at; a welcome distraction as they both moved anonymously through the urban landscape. 

Bus-Man’s face lit up again as the bus stopped at the level crossing. The alternating red lights made his nose look more prominent. _He really did have such a beautiful nose_. Joe thought of artistic muses and renaissance statues. Bus-Man really did look like one of the classical statues he had become so familiar with during his degree. Joe imagined he was back in Cambridge, but instead of kissing a blonde boy with a double-barreled surname who wouldn’t give him the time of day the next week, he was kissing Bus-Man next to the bronzes in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Actually no, Bus-Man didn’t need comparisons to art. Bus-Man didn’t need to live in that shaded and almost sepia toned world Joe had once moved in. Joe would kiss Bus Man next to the overflowing bin outside the Chicken Cottage just to see his face lit in the neon light as their lips met. 

Bus-Man’s face was only lit by the flickering white lights of the bus now as it bumped over the train track. Joe lent his head back against the bus seat, listened to his music and directed their very own arty indie film in his mind. Disappearing into his fantasy, Joe stretched his legs out as far as they could go in the cramped bus seat. The pain in them brought him back to reality; his knees ached after Friday football practice. Not from doing any actual training, but from sprinting halfway across the field and sliding across the grass on his knees to separate Jason and Marco, who in a scream of obscenities had turned football into a ten-year-old version of MMA. The Year Six team had a big semi-final game on Wednesday, but seemed much more interested in fighting each other than taking on board any of his strategies about teamwork and tactics. It was Joe’s unofficial goal that Jason would end the year without being sent to a PRU but that dream, like many in teaching, was slipping through his fingers more and more every day. 

Joe exhaled and looked down at his phone again. There was a text from ‘Mama’ which read, in Arabic: ‘My son working so late again. Hope the kids are good. Txt me when you are home’. Joe smiled, switched his phone keyboard back to Arabic, and replied to her that he was on the bus. He flicked through his apps again, and absent mindedly opened Grindr. He checked his messages, raised his eyebrows at a _very flirty_ message from a strikingly beautiful boy called Marcello, then remembered his sore knees and decided against it. 

Joe’s gaze turned back to Bus-Man; he picked up his phone and put it to his ear. Joe turned his music off but kept his headphones in his ears to try and discreetly listen to who Bus-Man was talking to. Joe could hardly hear his voice over the sounds of the bus engine but he watched as Bus Man furrowed his eyebrows and chewed on the side of his lip as he talked.

“You were the one who wanted this,” he heard Bus-Man say, as the bus idled at a stop reducing the noise of the engine. His voice was calm but Joe could hear the undercurrent of emotions in his accented voice. “Don’t come back to me with this shit now.” 

_Okay, he definitely wasn’t from West Yorkshire._

The bus started again and the rumbling of the engine drowned out the conversation again. Joe cursed this city and its ancient buses which almost bounced along the roads and vibrated noisily. He watched as Bus-Man sighed and continued talking, gesticulating with his other hand which wasn’t holding the phone.

“Fine,” he said, his voice louder now and enough to rise over the noise of the engine. “You can’t keep calling me like this.” 

Bus-Man took the phone away from his ear and looked at the screen as if he was checking as if he had lost signal. With a sigh, he put the phone down on the seat next to him. As the bus turned into a darkened housing estate, Joe saw him wipe at his eyes furiously with his coat sleeve. 

Fuck _._ Was Bus-Man crying? 

Bus-Man turned more to face the window and even through his thick coat, Joe saw the unmistakable shaky rise and fall of his shoulders. He dabbed at his eyes again and as the bus stopped again, Joe heard him sniff loudly. Bus Man angled his body closer to the window and stared out of it, almost as if he was trying to hide. 

Fuck. Bus-Man was _definitely_ crying... 

  
  


If there was one thing Nicky hated more than crying, it was crying in public. He didn’t cry often but when he did, he found it very hard to stop. It was as if somehow once the cork was taken off his emotions, they just kept flowing. 

What really stung, was that he _thought_ he was getting better. He thought things were improving. Over the last few weeks or so, there hadn’t been a big Owain shaped shadow hanging over his life. He felt he had stepped out into the light a little. 

Now he was crying on the bus. 

_Great. Just - great._

Nicky sniffed and wiped his snotty nose on the sleeve of his coat. Of course, today was the day when he didn’t have any tissues. He pulled a bit of the sleeve of his jumper out of his coat and dabbed at his eyes roughly with the fabric. Some people were pretty criers, Nicky knew he wasn’t, his face went red and his eyes puffy almost immediately. That wasn’t even mentioning the sheer amount of snot he somehow managed to produce. He wiped his nose on his coat sleeve again. When he cried there was no way of hiding it - everybody knew. 

With a sigh, he looked back across to where he had thrown his phone into his bag and stared at the blank screen. The feeling of security and happiness when he used to see Owain’s name was now just replaced with dread. Nicky hated that. He hated how it had taken over three months of texting for his autocorrect to stop putting ‘baby’ after ‘see you soon’. He hated the horrible draining silence at the end of their phone calls where ‘I Love You’ used to be. He hated how when he was at work, he used to open up the chat with Owain as if reflex to message him on his breaks. The world and everything in it had felt off-kilter for so long and when he was just coming back to equilibrium - Owain rang, a bit drunk, Nicky thought, saying how he had made a mistake. Deep down, Nicky knew he didn’t mean it. And now, Nicky knew - maybe things were better this way. 

At the beginning, he had rung Owain to ‘talk’ - Nicky hated that word, hated all that it stood for. 

“I feel like I am grieving,” he had said, sitting on the back step of Andy and Quynh’s conservatory, trying not to break down. 

“You’re not,” Owain had replied, his voice sounding far away on the phone, the sound of cars in the background almost drowning him out. “You’re not _grieving,_ Nicky.” 

Owain was wrong. It did feel like that. It was a form of grieving, a loss of not just a person but what seemed like a shared language, shared places, shared memories. Shared ... everything? Nicky curled in on himself - looking out of the window and trying to hide. He hated this, he hated crying in public, he hated how with one phone call everything seemed to fall apart again. 

The bus trundled and bumped through the city streets getting closer to Nicky’s stop. He gathered his stuff and tried to gather himself as he walked down the aisle towards the front. Suddenly, the bus braked and Nicky stumbled, stumbling and stomping hard onto the foot of the passenger closest to him. He looked down and said: 

“Sorry -” and nearly fell over again when he met the brown eyes of Bread-Man. Time slowed for a second as Nicky removed his foot from where it was squishing Bread-Man’s shoe into the floor. 

“It’s okay,” Bread-Man said back and flashed him a big smile, warm and open and _shit,_ beautiful. 

Nicky could have died on the spot. _God -_ he must look a state, with a half wiped snotty nose and red puffy eyes. He opened his mouth to say something else but no words came out. Instead, he hurried to the front of the bus and just managed to get off before the driver pulled away again.   
  


Joe watched him go, his mouth hanging slightly open. He went to speak to say something, _anything._ Deep down, he wanted to ask Bus-Man if he was okay, offer him a tissue, seize whatever he could from this unexpected meeting. The doors of the bus hissed shut - Bus-Man was already gone. Joe strained his neck to see him standing on the kerb, illuminated by a flickering street lamp, adjusting his backpack over his shoulders. The bus pulled away into the night, leaving Bus-Man on the side of the road. 

Nicky sighed deeply when he got off the bus. _Great, now he had made an idiot of himself._ His phone rang. He rummaged in his pocket for his phone, expecting to see Owain’s name there and tried to force himself to stop crying. Owain had already heard him crying once today - he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of hearing it again. He steeled himself to yell: _Fuck off,_ in both English and Italian as loud as he could into the phone. Even though, at the back of his mind, he knew he would answer with a polite: _Hello._

But instead of Owain’s name. he saw ‘Papa’ on the screen and swiped the green phone to answer, switching seamlessly to Italian. 

“Hi Papa,” he said, sniffing and trying to make it sound like he hadn’t been crying. “How are you?” 

“Hi Nicolò,” he paused and Nicky heard the sounds of birds in the background. His dad must be sitting on the porch of their house, most likely getting quickly through a packet of cigarettes. “I’m fine, Nico, tired and sore - arthritis playing up again.” 

“Are you making sure you are taking those new tablets on time?” Nicky sniffed again and continued walking up the street to his flat. “I’m pleased you are okay.”

Static drifted down the phone mingled with the soft squeaks of the rocking chair on the porch. Somewhere nearby another bird cried out and Nicky heard his dad take a drag from his cigarette. 

“Yeah, I am, I wrote the times down like you told me to last time.” He paused. “Are you okay, Nicolo?” he asked, his voice quiet, speaking in that tone that indicated he was trying to comfort him but didn’t quite know how. “You sound like you have been crying.” 

Nicky sniffed again and moved his phone to his other hand so he could wipe his nose on his coat sleeve again. 

“I haven’t - ” he lied. 

A pause on the line - too long. 

“I thought we weren’t going to lie to each other after your Mamma died.” 

The words hung low in the air - a kind of verbal freezing fog that sent a chill through Nicky’s body. 

“I know,” he said slowly. “I know, Papa, I know.” 

His dad exhaled on the line and then mumbled something Nicky couldn’t make out, in the way he always did when he was trying to gather his thoughts. 

“Owain?” his dad said, after a while. 

“Yeah,” Nicky replied, keeping the details vague. “He called me with some, I don’t know - some _bullshit_ anyway.” 

More static on the line. 

“I liked him, you know,” his dad said. “He was good to you - good to me as well after your Mamma died. I didn’t think he would ever do something like this to you. He seemed like a good man.” 

“I didn’t either, Papa,” Nicky hiccuped on the last word and felt tears slowly start to fall down his face again. 

At the start of his relationship with Owain, just before he had finished his Theology degree, Nicky had come out to his parents. He hadn’t seen the point before he had proof - and proof to him was in the form of a five-foot-nothing Welshman. His mother had taken it well, surrounded him with support and love and embarrassingly had conversations (actually call them arguments) with the local priest about what _exactly_ the Church should say about homosexuality. His Dad had taken it okay; he’d been a bit confused at first, a bit unsure what to do and say, but he had welcomed Owain and Nicky into his home with open arms. 

“I’m sorry, Nico,” his dad said - nobody else ever called him Nico and it made something nostalgic and familiar ache at the back of Nicky’s chest. He heard the tinkle of the cat’s bell and imagined her curling up in his dad’s lap. He saw her eyes closing as his dad scratched behind her ears. Another pause thickened the air. “Your Mamma would have known what to say -” 

When she got sick, they had both flown over and been there for her last month. Owain had made them both tea and breakfast on the morning of the funeral; held Nicolo’s hand as if he was his anchor; rubbed his father’s shoulder comfortingly as he tried and failed to hold himself together. Nicky swallowed back his tears. He wanted to say ‘yes she would have done’ - but he didn’t, instead he said: 

“It’s okay, Papa. I know. You are doing great.” 

He was trying - Nicky had to give him that. 

“Thanks, Nicolo, I - I uh, well, I think Zitto wants inside so - I should, I should probably go.” 

“Yeah, yeah, Papa - you do that.” 

“I love you, Nico.” 

“Love you too, Papa.” 

Nicky put his phone back into his pocket. He put the code into the main door of his block of flats and waited until it buzzed and unlocked. The stairwell felt especially cold and damp this evening. Wearily, Nicky unlocked the door into the empty flat. He flicked a light on and blinked as it flooded the room. With a sigh, he placed his keys down on the sideboard. Resting against the doorframe, Nicky looked out over his space, at his cheap Ikea lights, at the boxes of books still piled up in the corner, at the mound of clothes by the washing machine in his small kitchenette. Suddenly, he felt his knees give out beneath him and found himself kneeling on the thin pile of the carpet. Everything seemed to have fallen apart again, a crack splitting the new normality he had tried so hard to forge down the middle. Nicky splayed his hands out on the carpet and took a deep breath. 

_It was okay. He had this._

With a groan, Nicky pulled himself back up to his feet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Content warning for mentions of parental death_


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see end-notes for additional warnings <3

“Come sit down, Carter,” Joe said. He indicated to one of the two the child-size seats he had pulled up in front of his desk, facing each other. His lunch sat next to his computer - half eaten. Carter stood in the doorway, pulling at the edges of his jumper, looking small in front of Mrs Abebe, the teaching assistant. “It’s okay,” Joe said to her. “I’ll handle this from here. Come here, Carter.” 

Mrs Abebe shut the door behind her. She hovered in the entrance for a little bit and then walked off up the corridor. Carter swaggered across the room with that bravado only an eight-year-old - aware he had done something wrong and trying to be defiant about it - can have. He flopped down in the seat, kicking back in it immediately. “Stop that,” Joe said and sat down in front of him, his knees protested as he rested himself into the too-small chair. “How do you think I am feeling?” Joe scrunched up his eyebrows in disapproval, making his emotions clear on his face. 

“Not happy,” Carter replied, voice monotone, not making eye contact with him. 

“You’re right.” Joe scooched the chair closer to Carter, showing he was nearby and there for him, even in his disappointment and anger. “And why am I not happy, Carter?” 

Carter kicked his leg out again and pulled his sweatshirt sleeves over his hands. 

“Because I was mean to Kaya.”

Joe thought back to her running into his classroom, tears running down her little face, inconsolable as she wrapped herself around his leg and got snot all down his trousers. Eventually, she managed to choke out through sobs what had happened. 

“Yes,” Joe said. “We talk about how we are meant to treat our friends all the time, Carter. We don’t call our friends mean names, we don’t not let our friends play with us.” He looked at Carter as he scrunched up his little face in anger. 

“Kaya is _annoying,_ ” he whined. “She is loud and bumps into people and is obsessed with _bugs._ ” 

“So?” Joe replied, his voice calm. He slipped into a tone that was friendly but also firm. “That is what makes Kaya, _Kaya_. We support those things about our friends. You don’t have to play with Kaya all the time but we all have to respect each other.” 

Carter looked down at his feet. 

“I know Mr al-Kaysani,” his face flushed a deep pink. “I’m sorry.” 

Joe softened his voice even more. 

“You don’t have to apologise to me, Carter. Apologise to Kaya when she comes in from play-time.” His heart broke a little seeing the little boy in front of him, ashamed and remorseful but also broken in a way he was too small to be. 

“I am just angry,” Carter snapped eventually. ‘I just - I just don’t know what to do with it.” 

“And what makes you angry, Carter?” Joe asked, softly. “Tell me - we can talk about it.” 

“Kaya, she is annoying and I just want to punch her in the face,” Carter said as if it was the worst thing in the world.

“Other than Kaya,” Joe interjected. 

Carter looked towards the window. Then he said softly and more earnestly as if a wall was breaking down: “My brother, he _always_ tells me what to do.” He rubbed a hand over the shaved sides of his head, down to the little rat-tail at the back. “My Mum, she doesn’t want to play, she doesn’t want to do _anything._ My Dad, he didn’t get me my game for my birthday and I _never_ see him -” 

Carter clenched his small fist against his knee, almost shaking with emotion, looking simultaneously older and younger than his eight years. 

“It’s okay to feel angry, Carter,” Joe said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “But we can’t take it out on our friends.” 

“I don’t know what to do with it,” Carter replied sullenly and pointed to his chest. “It lives here - like this big fiery dragon. Like that one in the story you read us last week.” 

“It’s hard to know what to do, Carter,” Joe started. “Everybody gets angry, adults get angry, it’s how we express it.” Joe looked out the window, towards the children screeching and playing in the yard beyond. “I used to get very angry too when I was your age.”

Joe remembered how, as a child and young teenager, everything would become overwhelming; then he would snap - all hot rage - until it dissipated into an even hotter shame. He knew his anger came hot and fast; a match cast into a spill of alcohol that burned out just as quickly. As an adult - he knew all anger wasn’t bad. He thought back to his rage at Cambridge. His father had called him to say that the porter wouldn’t let him into the college without proof he was a parent of a student there. Every time he returned late at night he had to fumble in his bag for his student card while the majority of his friends were just let inside. After that, he had sent emails, signed petitions, and joined student advocacy groups. After classes, he’d take the trains to London, to Norfolk, to Kent to run art classes for disadvantaged children. What happened at Cambridge had started with anger, but it had dissipated into a cool and calm focus, which had set the groundwork for a small amount of change. It had led him here, to a classroom in an unremarkable city - with a small, hurting boy sitting in front of him. 

He turned back to Carter and tried to explain to him in a way he would understand. “Do you remember in our story last week, how the dragon learned how to control his fire and how both him and the knight learned how they could both help each other?” 

“I do. I thought it was silly - the dragon should have burned the knight to a crisp,” Carter said. He let out an almost manic laugh and mimed blowing fire, puffing his cheeks out. 

“It doesn’t help us to try and break other things when we are hurting Carter, it might make you feel big for a little bit. But it only hurts us more.” Carter looked at him for a long minute, his blue eyes softened and Joe knew that he understood at least somewhat. 

With a smile, Joe stood up slowly, his knees crying out in protest. Carter continued to look at him with his big eyes and Joe motioned to the door. “Go out and play, Carter - you can apologise to Kaya when you get back.” 

Joe watched him go with his sullen little walk and leaned back against his desk - he didn’t really know what to do. He’d read dozens of books on childhood trauma, anger-management, and the right approaches to take. With the social demographic of where he taught and the resulting needs of children in his class, he was well versed in it. However, it didn’t shake the feeling of helplessness he felt sometimes, the feeling of wondering if you were doing the _right_ thing. There were no easy answers, no quick fixes and Joe hated it. 

He went back to his desk and sat in his chair to pick at the rest of his lunch. The books from the morning were spread on the table in front of him waiting to be marked. Joe picked up a pencil and began to absentmindedly tick off questions on the maths worksheet. With his other hand, he took a bite of his sandwich. Suddenly as he was marking, he felt the pencil snap in his grip. The wood splintered and a harsh gray line streaked across the page. He cursed under his breath, not realising he was gripping the pencil so hard. 

With a sigh, he pushed the books away from him and took a sip from his can of Rubicon. Joe looked at the pot of pencils on his desk and reached for one. A strange thrill built deep within his chest and he snapped it clean in half. He stared at it for a few moments, at the chips of yellow paint flaking off the splintered wood and at the grey-black graphite inside. Joe tried to push the two pieces back together, almost as if they would magically seal up again. Then, he stood up and threw the pencil into the rubbish bin across the room. 

Sometimes, as an adult, breaking things can be _very_ cathartic. 

Nicky dragged the last of the empty boxes from the pharmacy delivery into the disposal bay and threw them on the floor. It had been a _day,_ a _week,_ a _fortnight._ This shift, he was the runner. He spent the day jumping between different patients, covering breaks, and assisting with the sickest while never really fully knowing what was going on. Adding to that, he was still feeling off-kilter from his call with Owain the other week. Nicky was frustrated, his body humming with that tension which he never really knew how to express. It felt simultaneously like he needed to scream but also if anybody talked to him within the next five minutes his brain would go into full shutdown. 

Nicky looked at the boxes before him and tentatively stepped on one, slowly crushing it to the floor. A thrill of excitement ran through him and he stepped up to another box and jumped on it with both feet. He began his own private frenzy, jumping up and down and squishing the boxes under his shoes. Nicky dropkicked one next, kicking through it like one of those wooden slabs in an eighties karate film. With another he ripped the sellotape off the bottom a bit too vigorously, then punched through it. He threw the biggest box down, jumped in the air - got ready to do a flying kick... 

Suddenly, the door of the disposal bay swung open and Quynh entered, holding a few more boxes. Nicky spun around after landing, hopping on one leg and trying to pull his shoe out from where it had become embedded in the thick cardboard. 

“What did those boxes ever do to you, Nicky?” she asked, placing her already dismantled pieces of cardboard next to the large bins. 

Nicky righted himself and slipped his shoe back on. He indicated to the sign on the wall which said in red letters, ‘Please Dismantle All Boxes’. “I am just doing what the sign says, following the Waste Disposal Policy.” 

“Hm,” Quynh grumbled, laughing at Nicky quoting policy at her. “I think that usually means take them apart nicely rather than going full Cung Le on them.” She motioned to Nicky’s leg, her face breaking into a smile. “You have a massive bit of sellotape stuck to your scrubs.” 

Nicky reached down and peeled the brown tape off his knee, as it came off small bits of blue lint stuck to it. With a groan, Nicky stuck the tape onto one of the dismantled boxes. 

“Thanks, Quynh.” 

Quynh looked at him. Her dark eyes scanned him up and down. 

“You're bleeding as well.” She indicated to Nicky’s hand, where a papercut was slowly started to well with blood. 

“Shit,” Nicky cursed under his breath and clamped his other hand over it, trying to stop the slow stream of blood. Quynh walked over and helped him stack the boxes in between the bags of laundry and the clinical waste skips. 

‘Nicky,” she said softly, readjusting the phone sitting in the cradle of her lanyard. “Are you alright?” 

Nicky narrowed his eyes at her, examining her expression for signs of what she might be asking about. 

“Have I done something wrong - missed something?” 

“No - no, Nicky,” Quynh spoke quickly, reassuringly. “Nothing like that - as always, your work is great. You are an excellent nurse. Everything you do is always meticulous.” A smile cut across her face. “A parent was just telling me how much they appreciated your care this morning actually.” Nicky looked down at the floor, slightly embarrassed. “I’m asking about _you,_ Nicky,” Quynh continued. “As your friend not as the Sister. Well - ” She stopped and adjusted herself on her bad foot, rolling her ankle and flexing it. “I am asking as a bit of both really.” 

“I am _fine_ ,” Nicky replied but his voice cracked on the last syllable. 

“Nicky -” Quynh began. “Look, I _know_ when you are stressed. I have seen you today; you haven’t stopped. You’ve re-organised Katrina’s trolley twice -"

“The enteral syringes were mixed in with the regular ones and she’d mixed the micron filter and normal needles together.” 

“ - And it’s annoying I know. But I’ve known you long enough to know all your tells. You are working a lot. We have had a lot of bad cases; a lot of bad deaths. You had that really awful arrest last week, and you have everything with Owain going on. I am worried it’s taking its toll.” 

Nicky walked over to the laundry bags and started retying some of the knots which had come undone, causing the sheets to spill out. 

“I am alright, honestly, Quynh.” 

She made a sound from the back of her throat which sounded like _yeah, okay._

“Nicky!” her voice echoed in the disposal bay. “Will you just stop faffing on with those bags and listen to me.” 

Her voice jolted Nicky back to attention. He let the bag he was re-tying go. 

“Okay, Quynh, okay,” he started. “I’m listening.” 

“Alright - you know you can see somebody and talk about all this. You are great at your job but at some point, you are going to burn out - especially at the rate you are going.” 

“Yeah,” Nicky said, knowing that he probably should. “I can book one of the appointments on the second Tuesday of the month. I’ll go have a little cry for half an hour, talk it all out and I’ll be back right as rain again.” 

Quynh sighed. 

‘Nicky, _please_. I’ve had to do it. Even Andy had to do it after I had my accident and you _know_ how bad Andy is at saying when she is struggling.” 

Nicky thought back to the two of them sitting blank-eyed in the Trauma ITU; Andy sleeping in the spare bed in what had been his and Owain’s spare room; Nicky trying to force her to eat something. There was lots of waiting - there always was in these situations. Nicky hadn't really comprehended how much it hurt, how heart-breakingly _long_ each minute felt when it was somebody you loved who was unconscious and close to death. Quynh and Andy had been off the coast swimming, a riptide had dragged Quynh away. She wasn’t breathing when the Lifeboat found her. Quynh had been intubated for two weeks. After that came the long slow process of rehab. For a while afterward, Andy had really struggled. She’d almost had to quit being an Intensivist. It had taken her a lot of work to even intubate again, to stop jumping at the sounds of ventilator alarms, to lead the ward round, and to ultimately deliver bad news to families. Nicky knew that when she looked into their eyes she saw her own pain reflected. Even now, she avoided the trauma calls involving drowning. Usually one of the other consultants took over, silently and wordlessly directing Andy to take over something else. 

Nicky looked up at Quynh and saw the concern written across her face. 

“I know,” he said, softly. “Quynh, I’ll go.” 

“I think it will be good for you, Nicky.” 

Quynh smiled at him and put her hand on her hips. 

“I’m going to do that annoying manager thing and tell you to tell me one good thing which has happened to you recently.” 

Nicky sighed, wracking his brain for something to say. He _did_ have a lot of blessings, Andy and Quynh’s friendship, his dad being in better health, but all his brain was screaming at him was _Bread Man, Bread Man, Bread Man._

“Well,” Nicky began. “There is this really cute guy I keep seeing on the bus.” 

Quynh widened her eyes as she held the door of the disposal bay open so they could exit. 

“Go on...” she said. Her smile spread into her voice. “Tell me everything.”

“So you're telling me that the only thing that is interesting right now is the fact you keep seeing the same guy on the bus,” Meriem said, scrunching up her eyebrows. “Yusuf there _must_ be more going on in your love life than that.” 

“Honestly, there really isn’t anything.” Joe sighed and took a sip from his milkshake. His teeth protested against the cold. “Bit of a dry spell.” 

“Hmm,” Meriem grumbled. “I was hoping Hassan, Amir and Amina would have worked their matchmaking magic by now. The last time I saw them, Amir promised me he would find you ‘The Perfect Husband’ by next Eid.” 

Joe laughed. He imagined Amir taking Meriem into the small kitchen at the back of the community centre, telling her all about his matchmaking plans while passing the teacups across the draining board for her to dry. 

“Well he better get started then - Ramadan begins next month.” 

Meriem smiled and laughed. “Hassan will be trying to find _so_ many eligible bachelors to invite to Iftar.” 

“They are worse than our aunties and _j_ _addatuna_ you know - absolutely obsessed with matchmaking. It’s as if Hassan and Amir don’t realise that the dating pool of queer, observant Muslim men is very small. Most of our newbies are students. So as soon as anybody arrives who is around my age, it is all hands on deck to try and get me together with them.” 

“They care,” Meriem said, her voice soft. “I’m pleased you have them over here with you.”

Meriem had always been a bit of a home-bird. Joe remembered her crying when they had left their house in Tunisia and moved to Rotterdam after their father had decided he would focus upon the European export side of the family business. She lived back in their old family house now with her husband and their Grandmother. Every spring she sent Yusuf pictures weekly of how his favorite orange tree was blossoming and then slowly producing fruit. She co-ran their family business with their father now and made regular trips from Tunisia, across to Holland, and the UK. 

She looked up as the waiter brought over two plates of waffles piled with ice-cream, chocolate, and strawberries. She thanked him in English as he placed the plates down on the table. 

“I told you this place was good,” Joe said, scooting his plate closer towards him. “It’s got terrible lighting and is filled with teenagers on dates but -” He picked one of the strawberries slices off his waffle and ate it. “You can’t deny the food is great. And there is nowhere else you can get waffles at ten at night.” 

Meriem nodded in agreement and started on her own food. She closed her eyes and smiled as she chewed on the waffle. 

“Yeah, can see why you like it here.” 

Both of them sat facing each other on hard plastic chairs. Meriem’s suitcase from the airport stood tucked under the table. The fluorescent lights above them were harsh and a group of teenagers laughed loudly in the booth next to them. Outside the half steamed up window, Joe could see the fuzzy muticoloured outlines of the neon lights from the nightclubs and takeaways opposite. People moved across the window in transient shadows, mere refractions of the many aspects of their lives. 

“How’s _j_ _eddati_ doing?” Joe asked. 

“Oh -” Meriem replied, dabbing at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “She’s good, well - it’s more of the usual really. She’s convinced Medhi is _baba_ and I am _mama_ and she keeps hatching schemes to get us together.” Meriem laughed, a twinge of sadness in her voice. “She gets _very_ pleased with herself whenever I show her my ring.” 

Joe smiled and a spark of affection bloomed at the pit of his stomach. 

“I should call.” 

“You do - I always say to her you have asked after her whenever you call me.” 

Joe looked down at his plate and spread the now melting ice-cream around the waffle. 

“I still feel bad though. It’s been a while since I went home.” 

Meriem reached out and touched Yusuf gently on the arm. 

“al-Kaysani’s travel, Yusuf. It’s what we have always done. We build little lives all over the world, and when we do come home - it’s special.” She looked up, expression soft and sincere. “Home will always be waiting for you Yusuf, but the one you are creating for yourself here is also important.” 

Joe didn’t want to tell her that, over the past few months, that sense of home and security he had built for himself here seemed to be slipping away. Maybe it had something to do with how Booker’s life had fallen apart? A deep-rooted sense of fear invoked from the fact that his best friend, who always seemed so happy and stable - now seemed to be drowning on dry land. Or maybe - even with all the people around him - he just felt a little lonely. 

Instead he said: 

“I know. I’ll make sure to come back in the summer holidays when mama and baba go back for the month.” 

“I think _teta_ would like that.” Meriem delicately cut another slice of her waffle and chewed on it slowly. 

A small silence fell between them as they both continued eating their food. 

“So -” Meriem said after a while. “Tell me more about this Bus-Man.” 

Joe laughed softly. 

“It’s a bit silly,’ he said. “I just keep seeing this same guy. There’s something about him which just draws me to him. It’s like I want to get to know him better. I want to find out more about him.” 

Meriem winked at him. 

“You want to find out more about what he looks like under his clothes.” 

Joe clasped his hand over his heart in mock offense and gasped. 

“It’s not even that. Like he’s attractive - not _supermodel_ attractive - but he’s just got one of those faces y’know. It’s a unique face. He seems like an interesting person. I just want to get to know him better.” 

Joe looked up to see his sister smiling at him. 

“I mean, Yusuf. You could just _talk to him_ \- ” 

“How hard is it just to _talk to him_ ,” Andy said as she stirred a third sugar into her coffee. She lent on the counter next to the sink and the hot water boiler. With a frown, she took a sip from her comically large mug with _THE BOSS_ emblazoned across it in holographic letters. 

Nicky looked up from the table where he was blowing on a spoonful of soup, made almost molten by the microwave. He scraped the edges of the bowl. A small amount had dried a little and clustered together. 

“You can’t _just talk to somebody_ on the bus. It’s seen as weird,” Nicky replied. He slurped the soup off the spoon, burning his mouth a little and forcing himself to swallow. 

“Why can’t you?” Andy said. She turned to Nile, who whipped around from stabbing the plastic film of her microwave curry at the sound of Andy’s voice. “Nile, tell Nicky he can just talk to somebody on a bus.” 

Nile - who had progressed to junior registrar just a few weeks earlier - was eager to impress but also not afraid to express her own opinion. Nicky liked that about her. They’d become a lot closer in the few months she had been working on the unit. 

“I mean, I agree with Nicky. You can’t just talk to somebody on a bus.” She turned the dial of the microwave and pressed start. “What would you even say: ‘Hello Mr Bread-Man, you are very attractive - please _do_ take my number’ - it’s odd.” 

Nicky laughed softly. Andy took another gulp from her coffee and shook her head. 

“I just don’t see why you can’t just talk to somebody on a bus,” she said. 

“You just can’t,” Nile and Nicky replied in unison. “You can’t just talk to somebody on a bus”. 

Andy scrunched up her eyebrows as if this was the most confusing thing in the world.

“I mean I _just talked_ to Quynh," she said. "How are you meant to meet anybody if you don’t just _talk_ to people.” 

With that, the door of the staff room opened and Quynh walked in. She made eye contact with Andy, sighed, and pulled her handover covered in scribbled notes out of her pocket. 

“I thought you were seeing that trauma call in Resus,” Quynh said. She went over to her bag and rummaged around for her green tea. “Or are you just loitering and drinking coffee in my staff room”. 

Andy laughed in a way she didn’t when Quynh was not around. “ETA is still 25 minutes, I have time for a coffee.” She indicated across the room. “Nile’s going to hold the fort here.” 

Quynh looked at Nile removing her curry from the microwave and motioned her head towards her. “After curry, I assume?” 

Nile looked almost as if she was about to throw her curry straight out the window and immediately rush back to work. Quynh had that effect on people - especially the junior doctors. 

“My Registrar needs to eat, Quynh,” Andy said. Nile looked at her curry with relief and sat down. 

“Fair enough,” Quynh dropped the conversation. 

Nicky continued to eat his soup, it was bland and his bread was kind of stale. It took him a long time to get through a loaf these days. He supposed he should start freezing it - that would be a good idea. He would try and cook something properly again on his day off for his next shift. He’d stopped doing that this week and he wasn’t really sure why.

A comment by Andy drew him out of his thoughts: “Quynh, tell Nicky he can just talk to somebody on the bus”. 

Quynh looked puzzled. 

“What?” she said, confusion written on her face. “Why would Nicky want to talk to somebody on a bus?” 

Andy wiggled her eyebrows and made a kissing motion. “It’s his Bread-Man - you know, the one you told me about”. 

A look of recognition passed across Quynh’s face as if she had just remembered their previous conversation from a few days before. Nicky stayed silent. Nile sat opposite from him, now also eating her curry, also silent. 

“It’s still weird to talk to somebody on a bus,” Quynh said. “Nobody wants to speak to anybody on the bus.” 

Nile lifted a forkful of curry to her mouth and blew on it. “You should get Tinder.” She paused. “Or Grindr. It’s like a whole bus full of handsome men right there on your phone.” 

Nicky’s laugh sounded as if he was trying to mask sounding scornful. “I don’t have time for dating,” he said, even though he didn’t really believe it. Deep down, he was sacred, it had been so long he wouldn’t even know where to begin. He’d been with Owain since he was twenty-one - he was the only person he’d _ever_ dated seriously. The only person he’d ever been with. Dating again seemed like entering a world of new norms and routines which Nicky wasn’t sure he was ready to try and navigate just yet. 

Quynh looked up from where she was filling her teacup with hot water. She turned to face him, one hand on her hip. 

“Ah - Nicolo di Genova, the holy martyr of the overtime Off-Duty. You know, most people don’t work five shifts a week.” 

“I want to.” Nicky protested. “We’re short-staffed.” Quynh looked at him as if to say: _that’s not the only reason_. “Also I have rent to pay and I’m saving....” 

Quynh huffed softly. 

“Okay, okay, I mean I am happy you fill my spare shifts.” Her voice shifted in tone slightly, to one of barely masked concern. “I just don’t want you to burn yourself out.” She turned back to him before she went. “Think about what I said to you the other day.” 

“I know, Quynh, I know.” 

With that, phones rang, Quynh started talking about bed transfers and ward discharges, Andy went down to Resus, Nicky went back to his soup and ate, with Nile, in companionable silence. They sat, enjoying the small reprieve from beeping alarms and constant talking, reassurance, and planning. 

The following week, Nicky went to the counsellor and like Quynh said: it helped. He thought it wouldn’t, but it did. It helped to talk about his guilt. His guilt of feeling sad about Owain when every day he saw families torn apart; lives ended too young; pain, suffering, death. The woman smiled over her glasses and said: _that’s normal but it’s good to talk about it; it’s good to recognise those feelings_. Just talking about it helped a little. 

Sometimes, Nicky felt his pockets were full of little weights. Little weights formed from every painful thing he saw; every sudden death; every death which families knew was inevitable but which inched forwards towards them like a slow-moving glacier. Coming on the day-shift to find the bed-space he was at the night before empty and already made up again with fresh white sheets. Going home at night and still hearing beeping alarms, phantom ECG traces etched into his retinas. These things were difficult to talk about. It sometimes felt impossible to offer comfort in unimaginable times. There was a benefit in emptying his pockets of those weights and spreading them out on the table for others to look at, for others to see and say: _that’s awful - but you were there; you helped_. 

The counsellor also talked about self-care. She mentioned having something simple to care for. Something you can see grow, something you can control. So, on a Sunday afternoon, Nicky went to a garden centre and bought too many house-plants which he tried to keep alive. Every morning, he watered the ones which needed watering and picked off the dead leaves. Nicky watched them flourish under his care over the next few weeks and smiled. 

He started to do four twelve-hour shifts a week instead of five. Gradually, he began listening to podcasts; cooking new recipes; reading books again; and taking showers that lasted longer than five minutes. Nicky realised, as he prepared his breakfast and watched his Moka pot heat up on the stove, he was learning how to create a comforting space within and for himself. 

He thought about what Nile had said about Grindr so opened the app store and downloaded it onto his phone. He opened it, looked at the options for adding photos and a bio, and then shut the app down again. Nicky knew he would probably set it up a fit of midnight loneliness when masturbating just _wasn’t_ cutting it anymore. 

However, right now, he wasn’t sure he was ready yet. 

Joe never really felt ready when waiting to meet a Grindr date. He looked down at his phone at the text which read: _Eight pm?_ \- and tapped his foot on the pavement. Eventually, a man walked up the street, hand held up in a wave. The man - Mark - had beautiful blue eyes and small thin lips. They went for a cursory drink and then made out in the back of the taxi on the way back to Mark’s place. He wore too much hair gel like a nineties boy-band member but somehow looked good nonetheless. As he leaned in to kiss him again, Joe realised Mark smelled of some celebrity-branded aftershave that he was _sure_ had declined a sample of in the department store the week before.

Still, it was a connection. It didn’t have to be perfect. 

So, in an unfamiliar flat, Joe knelt on the hardwood floor and took Mark’s cock into his mouth, feeling its weight on his tongue. He sucked him off, almost to completion, until Mark moved back slightly: 

“Wait, wait,” he said breathlessly. “I thought I was going to fuck you?” 

“Yeah,” Joe said, remembering what they had discussed on the app. “I want that.” 

It helped that Mark was attentive, prepping Joe carefully and tenderly, even though he could tell he was focused on what appeared to be the goal. Once they were ready, he bent Joe over the arm of the sofa. Slowly Mark began to fuck him while Joe jerked himself off. Joe’s trousers still hung around his ankles and his belt lay heavy on his feet. The thick weave of the blanket that they had put down over the sofa dug into his thighs. With each slow thrust of Mark’s hips, it left behind crisscrossed imprints onto his flesh. 

“You can go faster,” Joe whispered through gritted teeth. There wasn’t enough sensation - he just _needed_ to feel something. “I don’t mind it a bit rough. I - I want that. If you do?” 

Mark made a growling noise at the back of his throat and splayed a hand out over the back of Joe’s shoulder blades, pushing him down as he fucked into him harder. 

“Can I call you a slut?” he asked as if he was inquiring whether he could borrow a pen. 

“Yeah, go on,” Joe replied, even though he’d never really been into that. It might feel different this time. “Call me a slut.” Mark moved his hand back to Joe’s hip, squeezed hard, and thrusted again with a deep moan. 

“You feel so good,” Mark’s voice came out breathy and Joe whined as he increased the pace. “Uh, you like that don’t you, you little slut. Just loving my dick in you like the slut you are.” 

“Yeah,” Joe said, almost bent double over the arm of the sofa now, his elbows pressing into the cushion. _Okay, this whole slut thing_ really _wasn’t doing it for him._

“Feels good?” Mark asked and trailed a hand over the small of Joe's back. His voice came out smaller now, tinged with a slight note of insecurity. 

“Yeah,” Joe replied. “Feels good.”

It _was_ good, Joe supposed. He stared forward at the bumpy wall in front of him; at the generic homestore artwork and the photographs of smiling strangers. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on the sensations. A moan left his mouth as Mark hit just the right spot inside of him, then pulled back too quickly. It was _fine,_ it was a release. All sex was poetry: this was just choppy spontaneous Beat poetry rather than a delicate sonnet or well-crafted _ghazal._

Joe looked down and realised he had stopped touching himself. Mark thrust into him again, _just_ missing when Joe really wanted him to hit. He groaned, more in frustration than pleasure, and looked down at his cock beginning to soften. Not entirely sure where the thought had come from, Joe began to imagine it was Bus-Man behind him. His strong hand on his back, his (he thought) Italian accented voice in his ear. The man thrust into him again and this time didn’t draw back too quickly. Somewhat ashamed, but too far gone to really care, Joe put his hand back around his cock, matching his rhythm. He was a bit taken aback by his thoughts. Imagining somebody else fucking him made an already somewhat anonymous encounter seem even more so. _It was okay, this was fantasy, he could let himself be a bit self-indulgent_. Joe worked his thumb around the head of his cock, slowly, just the way he liked it. He felt himself grow harder again, imagined Bus-Man’s face, and allowed himself to disappear into the sensation. 

After they came - (Mark quickly, hard and loud; Joe slowly, soundlessly at first and then all at once) - Mark laid across his back like a cloak and tried to run his hand through Joe’s hair. His fingers tangled in his curls and pulled uncomfortably. Joe gasped and Mark drew his hand away as if he had been scalded. 

In his post-sex daze, Joe watched Mark walk through to the kitchen to put the condom in the bin. He was still in his, now rumpled, shirt with his underwear pulled back up. He looked alien, a ghost Joe didn’t recognise anymore now the endorphins and emotions were starting to clear. Framed in the white light spilling out of the doorway, Mark brought back two plastic glasses of water and passed one to Joe. They sat on the dry side of the blanket and drank them, two inches between them. Mark didn’t seem like the type to ask him to stay and Joe didn’t really want to. 

After they finished their water, he booked Joe an Uber. They waited for it awkwardly in the foyer of the building, not saying much, the intimacy of what had gone before not spreading outside that moment. 

“Thank you,” Mark said and kissed him on the cheek. 

“Yeah, thanks,” Joe replied and returned the kiss in the same fashion. “I had fun.” 

Mark smiled. His phone vibrated; he looked at it and showed Joe the picture on the screen.

“Driver’s name is Xavier, the number plate is KU60 XYU.” He looked down at his feet, much more bashful than when he was fucking. “Thanks again for tonight.” 

Joe nodded and smiled. He walked out to the waiting car and opened the back door, conscious he probably smelled of sex and sweat. 

“For Mark?” he said. 

“Yeah,” the driver replied, staring forward as the windscreen wipers cut through the rain on the windows. 

Joe got in and the car pulled off into the night. They moved through the city, one car of many, cutting through the puddles set aflame by the orange streetlights. Joe shifted on the leather seat and saw the driver looking at him in the rearview mirror. 

“Good night?” he asked. 

“Yeah, yeah, just quiet...” Joe replied and looked back at his phone; the flash and glow of stark blue light cut off the driver’s attempt at conversation. 

Joe stared at his phone and scrolled absentmindedly through the news. He’d had fun, he thought. Mark had been _nice,_ not perfect, but attentive enough. It was good he was trying hooking up again. It was a release, a change from the routines of his everyday life. Even so, he felt cold at the thought of returning back to his own bed tonight. When he was a younger man, he’d been buoyed by romantic thoughts, in love with the idea of love. Now it seemed much more like life was just a steady stream of trying to forge connections and having them, more often than not, slip between your fingers. As Joe scrolled the sports page, blood rose to his cheeks and he remembered lying over Mark’s couch, fist around his cock, imagining Bus-Man fucking into him. It had felt good to imagine that - his own private fantasy. Now, without the rush of sex, it just felt slightly sad and embarrassing. Joe scrubbed a hand across his face and sighed. He really needed a shower. Usually, after casual sex, even if they never talked again after fucking, he felt energised for a few days. 

This time, Joe just felt very alone. 

The taxi pulled up outside his house. Joe thanked the driver and exited the car. Joe looked up at the dark empty windows of his house - curtains still open. It was two am; his thighs ached, he smelled of sweat. Joe turned his key in the door, flicked the hallway light on, and went upstairs to shower the remains of the night away. 

_Maybe he was just getting old. Maybe this was just the way life_ was _in your thirties._

Life went on. Nicky went to work. Joe went to work. Nicky went home. Joe went home. Joe saw Nicky on the bus. Nicky saw Joe on the bus. Joe didn’t talk to Nicky and Nicky didn’t talk to Joe. The blossoms on the trees started to fall and the days grew longer as the spring warmed. Joe continued his meetings with Carter’s family and social team. The Year Sixes lost their Semi-Final match in spectacular fashion. As always, there were books to be marked and lessons to be planned. Nicky continued his routine at work, met Andy, Quynh, and now Nile for dinner every week; talked to his dad on the phone, and made plans to return to Genoa on his annual leave.

The bus carried them both back and forth, through the daily journeys of their lives.

At the beginning of May, Nicky got on the bus after a shift that felt it lasted a good five hundred years. His hips ached, his knees ached, his feet ached. All he wanted to do was sit down, put his headphones in and let his music drown out the world. Nicky looked around. Unusually for this time, all the seats were taken. Most of the passengers were in football shirts, heading back from a home game, loud and rowdy and drunk, and exactly what Nicky _didn’t_ need. 

He scanned around the seats. There was one free. Usually, he would just stand rather than sit but the pain in his hips was spreading out to his back. Also, the seat-mate clinched the deal for Nicky. He walked slowly up the aisle to the seat. 

“Excuse me,” he asked. “Can I sit here?” 

Bread-Man removed his earbuds, looked up, and smiled. _Okay - new development: he had cute little eye crinkles which formed when he smiled._ Nicky’s heart pounded in his chest. 

“Oh yeah, sorry, of course,” he said as he moved his bag off the seat and down between his feet. His accent was fairly neutral. “Please, sit down.” 

“Thanks,” Nicky replied and sat down next to him. 

Bread-Man smiled and his gaze lingered a moment before he cleared his throat, put his earbuds back in, and looked out of the window. Nicky put on his own headphones and looked the other way. The sounds of a football chant drifted in through his headphones. 

Every millimetre of the tiny gap between their thighs pulsed through Nicky’s head. He felt he was back on the school bus. The distance between him and the boy he was crushing on so small physically, but an emotional gulf that seemed impassable. The same burning tension filled the air as the bus turned a corner and Bread-Man’s shoulder brushed his own. Tiny tingles swelled there and Nicky resisted the urge to lean in. He wanted nothing more than to just talk to Bread-Man, not even to ask him about the bread but just to ask him how his day went. Nicky wondered how it had been. Was Bread-Man as tired as him? Who was he going home to? Bread-Man shuffled in his seat and yawned softly. Nicky dug his fingernails into the meat of his own thigh. 

They were on the bus. 

You can sit next to each other. 

But you don’t talk to somebody on the bus. 

As the bus jostled them, parallel thoughts ran through Joe’s head. He wondered what it would be like to reach over and place his hand on Bus-Man’s thigh. What would it be like to travel together? He inhaled and tried to focus on his music. He snuck a glance over to the man next to him. This close he could smell the faint smell of bleach and deodorant on the man’s clothes mixed with an undercurrent of sweat. Joe imagined burying his face in the curve of his jawbone, slowly kissing down his neck. He wondered where he was going back to, an empty house like his own; or children, a family - a wife? Joe’s eyes glanced down at Bus-Man’s backpack between his knees and saw a tiny rainbow pin on the strap - a _boyfriend_? He looked across to Bus-Man’s finger, no ring - no husband or wife then. In the months they had seen each other and had taken the same journey together, Joe felt a strange kind of intimacy with him. It felt like they _knew_ each other, but they ultimately didn’t. Joe knew his feelings about him were just projections of his own emotions; his own loneliness; some unresolved gap he was trying unsuccessfully to fill with mindless Grindr dates and work.

Joe turned and looked out of the window, worried he was staring a bit too much at the man next to him. He exhaled and chewed on the inside of his mouth as the lights of the city rushed by. 

They were on the bus. 

You don’t talk to somebody on the bus. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Additional content warnings for a brief mention of racism in English universities, and a one-night stand - which while is very consensual - probably doesn't involve as much communication as it should_
> 
> Cung Le is a Vietnamese-American actor, MMA fighter, and kickboxer - Quynh is a big fan, she thinks Nicky's skills aren't up to scratch though. 
> 
> Thank you to McFucking Achillies on discord for answering some of my questions about Arabic _teta_ and _jeddati_ , both mean grandmother, and _jaddatuna_ means our grandmother. All inaccuracies are my own. 
> 
> Don't worry the pining won't go on _too_ much longer. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter, as always I love to hear from you all <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see the warnings in endnotes for added content warnings. Mind the 'descriptions of medical stuff" tag for this chapter specifically <3
> 
> I hope you all enjoy this chapter, I'll get to the rest of the comments on chapter 2 asap, life just kicked me in the butt a little this last week.
> 
> Thanks to the fam for the cheer-reading and beta <3

On a grey morning in late May, Nicky stared out of the bus window. This morning was his fourth shift in a row, tiredness pulled at the edges of his mind and his legs felt slow and sluggish. He turned and looked around at the people on the bus, their heads bowed, looking at their phones, books, or just the floor. Nicky peeked a little look behind himself to see Bread-Man with his eyes closed and his headphones in. He thought back to the handover he had given last night, how he would probably be with the same patient today, what he was going to have for lunch... 

A normal day. 

When Nicky first moved to the UK to do his Theology degree at nineteen, he soon realised that the British didn’t like to talk on public transport. It wasn’t that people talked all that much on the bus in Italy, it was just that the British seemed very keen to make it part of their identity. Even in the north - where he could happily have a five minute conversation with the cashier in the supermarket - conversations with strangers on public transport were strictly off-limits. One of his friends back then, a student from Nigeria, had laughed and said: “Nicky, the only time the British talk to each other on the train or bus, is if there are delays, everybody is pissed, or there is some emergency - even then the conversation will be kept to a minimum.” 

So, when Nicky was jolted from his thoughts by the bus, moving not with its usual bumpiness, but slowing down and seemingly moving off the road - he realised was living in one of those moments. The bus inched ever so slowly towards a lamppost at the side of the road. The collision seemed to happen in even slower motion, almost in reverse. Nicky would have said he watched it like a car crash - if it wasn’t _actually_ a car crash.

A slow murmur came up from the passengers around him - a buzz like a nest of curious hornets. Nicky looked up and over to the driver and knew immediately something wasn’t right. He slumped over in the cabin, one hand still on the steering wheel, the other clutching at his chest. 

Since he had started his nursing training, Nicky had mentally run over what he would do in situations like this. That didn’t shake the feeling of dread on a train, or a flight, when he heard the ‘are there any medical professionals on board’ announcement. It had only happened twice: one time on a flight back to Italy where a child had a seizure, another time on a train when an old lady collapsed in the heat. He watched as the driver slumped over further, and the bus came to a shuddering, horrible, grating, stop. 

_Okay, this seemed bad._

The mumbling on the bus got louder. 

Nobody moved for a long, slow, drawn-out second. 

“Does anybody know what to do?” a woman’s voice, tinged with anxiety, finally asked. 

“I’m a nurse,” Nicky said. His voice sounded alien to him, too loud in the silence which had descended. He stood up, body moving before his mind, and walked towards the front of the bus. The engine still ticked over although the bus wasn’t moving, or was that the thudding just his own pulse hammering in his skull? Taking a deep breath, Nicky walked up to the side of the driver's cabin. 

“Hello?” he said. “You alright? My name’s Nicky. You okay?” His voice rose in volume as he drew closer. Nicky scanned his eyes around the cabin, checked for danger: sparking electrics, bleeding, anything of the sort. Nothing. “Hello,” he said again. He reached into the cabin and squeezed the man’s trapezius. 

No response. 

With a tug, Nicky pulled the door open. Before he could reach out to catch him, the driver slumped out onto the floor. His skin was pale and flecked with blue around his lips. 

_Not good._

The faint mumbling of voices echoed in Nicky’s head. They faded even more as he focused intently on the man lying in front of him. 

“Somebody call 999,” he directed. Again, it felt like his voice was coming from outside of himself. His brain clicked into work mode - thoughts now focused on assessment. “It’s going to be okay,” he said to the man as he tilted his head back, opened his airway, and looked in his mouth for any obstructions. Slowly, he turned the man’s head to one side to clear a small trickle of spit and bile. “It’s okay,” Nicky reassured him as he turned his head back to the midline and tipped his chin back again. “We’ll get you sorted.” He placed a hand on the man’s chest and leaned his ear close to his nose and mouth feeling for breath. 

Nothing. 

Vaguely outside of his little bubble, Nicky could hear a woman’s voice speaking on the phone. 

“He’s not breathing,” Nicky shouted, as he opened the man’s jacket and shirt, revealing his chest. “Tell them he’s not breathing.” He looked up, his eyes not fully seeing the people in front of him. It all seemed a bit of a blur. 

Nicky placed his overlocked hands on the man’s chest and pressed downwards deep and forcefully. Even after all the times he had done this Nicky had never really got used to the sensation. He counted under his breath. When he got to thirty, he started another round of compressions. His arms already crying out, he asked: “Does anybody else know CPR?” 

In the corner of his vision, Nicky saw a man come up beside him. He looked at him, only half seeing, and registered tight curls, kind eyes, a jumper, and shirt - strangely familiar. 

“I do,” the man said, sounding panicked. “I do it every year. Although, I have only done it on one of those creepy doll things. I -” He paused and took a breath. “I don’t know if I can do it.” 

“You can do it.” Nicky said, still counting the round of compressions in his head. “Go in my bag, I have a pocket mask on my keys. Front pocket.” 

The man made a noise that sounded like an affirmation. 

Nicky did another round of compressions, as he was finishing up he saw the man kneel down in front of him again. He looked up straight into the face of the man. Bread-Man. His kind eyes were opened wide in panic as he fumbled to open the yellow packet containing the pocket mask. “Put it over his face,” Nicky said and realised he was panting, sweat dripping down his face. Bread-Man placed the mask over the driver’s face. “Two breaths when I get to thirty. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.” 

Bread-Man blew twice into the mask and looked up at Nicky with wide eyes. 

Nicky started the compressions again, his shoulders ached, his hands trembled and his lungs burned from the exertion. As he pushed down, he felt a rib crack against the heel of his hand. Saliva rushed to his mouth and he swallowed it down. 

“You okay?” Bread-Man asked. Nicky could hear the concern dripping from his voice. 

“Can you take over?” Nicky struggled to get his words out, still counting under his breath. “After you do the breaths.” 

He got to thirty, delivered the breaths and they swapped positions. They’d lost precious seconds. They needed more people. Bread-Man arranged his hands over the driver’s chest and seemed to freeze. 

‘What do I do?” Bread-Man said, his voice high pitched. He cursed under his breath in what sounded like French. 

“Your hands are right,” Nicky said, surprised by how calm his voice sounded. “Just push down. It will feel too hard - same beat as Staying Alive.” 

“I hate-” Bread-Man pushed downwards and counted “One. How morbid-” He took a deep breath: “Two. That is.” He pushed down again: “Three.” 

“Good, count out loud just like that.” 

Bread-Man looked dazed as he pressed down on the man’s chest. His curls flopped into his eyes and patches of sweat darkened under the arms of his thin light blue jumper. 

“Anybody getting a defibrillator?” Nicky shouted out, knowing that the dispatcher would have told the person calling where the nearest AED was. 

“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine,” Bread-Man counted, his voice shaking. 

Nicky delivered the breaths after he said: “Thirty”. 

“Somebody’s getting one,” a voice called. 

Bread-Man continued to count and they both fell into a rhythm together, trusting that they knew what the other was going to do next. 

“Paramedics?” Nicky asked. 

“Not long,” another voice replied. 

Nicky looked over to see that Bread-Man’s arms were also shaking, sweat ran down his face, dripping on the end of his nose. 

“Swap out when you get to thirty,” Nicky said. 

“Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.” Bread-Man’s voice came out raspy. Nicky delivered the breaths and they swapped positions. 

“You’re doing great,” he said to Bread-Man as he shuffled on his knees to the driver’s head and kept the mask on his face. Nicky started compressions again. 

One of the other passengers entered back onto the bus, panting and holding a box in their hand. 

“Defib?” Nicky asked. “Get it set up.” The passenger, a young woman with a ponytail opened the box. “Just follow the instructions, it’s okay.” 

She placed the pads on the man’s chest shakily and pressed the button on the defibrillator. 

“Analysing rhythm,” the robotic-sounding voice said. “Shockable rhythm. Charging.” Nicky continued to do compressions until the voice said: “Charged. Step back from the patient. Press button to deliver shock. Step back from the patient.” 

“Everybody off,” he said. 

“I’m off,” Bread-Man replied, holding up his hands and sounding a little calmer now. 

“I’m off,” the young woman said. 

Nicky pressed the button and delivered the shock, the two others winced as the driver jerked in front of them. 

“Take over please,” he said to Bread-Man. “Two minutes and then we shock again,” He motioned to the defibrillator. “It will tell us.” 

They continued compressions until the machine interjected: “Analysing rhythm. Shockable rhythm. Charging.” They all stepped back again and Nicky pressed the button to shock again. Afterward, Nicky placed two fingers on the driver’s carotid artery and felt for a pulse again. No change. 

Weary, they continued. At last, they heard the sound of the bus door opening and footsteps. Nicky looked up from where he was doing compressions to see three paramedics entering the bus followed by a police officer. 

“What’s the situation?” one of the paramedics, a tall, stocky, blonde asked. “It’s okay, we’re here now.” 

Nicky looked up and felt a bead of sweat run down the back of his neck. 

“Not breathing, no pulse. We’ve given two shocks - still in VF.” 

The paramedics knelt down. They all started opening their bags, running their assessment, and getting ready to start their treatment. One opened a cannula pack and the other waited to take over the compressions. 

“Thanks,” the other said, Nicky felt her hand on his back as he pushed down again. “Finish that round and we’ll take it from here.” 

Nicky finished and stood up. It finally felt like he could breathe again. The scene in front of him swam in front of his eyes and he found himself leaning against the cold metal next to the open door. His whole body was shaking and the adrenaline coursing through his veins made his skin crawl. Leaning against the cold metal, Nicky steeled himself. A hand on his shoulder drew his attention back. 

“Excuse me, sir-” Nicky whipped around to see a police officer standing behind him. “You need to step away from the scene. This yours?” she asked, motioning to the backpack on the floor. Nicky nodded and picked up his bag.

The air hit Nicky immediately as he stepped off the bus and out into the morning. He looked over to see Bread-Man speaking to an officer, still shaking through his coat. The officer wrote something down in his notebook and Bread-Man looked down at his feet and swayed slightly. He could tell he wasn’t okay but trying to hold it together in that same way Nicky had seen so many times before. Bread-Man’s shoulders moved up and down quickly as if he was on the edge of hyperventilation. A small voice in Nicky’s head, stuck in observation mode, said: _high resp rate._

As he talked, Bread-Man ran a hand over his curls; a bit guiltily Nicky wondered what it would be like to do that. Then, Bread-Man put his head in his hands and scrubbed across his face as if hiding from something. _Oh,_ Nicky thought, _I just really want to give him a hug._ As he watched Bread-Man try and hold himself together, Nicky realised he was also shaking. The sensations seemed to creep in slowly; a dry mouth; racing pulse; wobbly legs. _Okay, he probably needed to sit down at some point._

“Are you alright to talk?” The officer said, dragging Nicky’s attention back. “We need a statement of what happened.” 

Nicky looked at the front of the bus, caved in and dented, the front embedded in the lamppost at the side of the road. He explained what had happened as best he could.

“Do you have a medical background?” the officer asked, not looking up at Nicky as she kept writing. “Doctor?” The officer said it as if she was reading off a list. She looked up at Nicky “Nurse? Paramedic? St John’s?” 

“I’m a nurse,” Nicky said. “You’ll need my NMC PIN I guess?” 

“Yeah,” she replied. “We’ll need that.” 

Nicky fumbled in his jacket pocket for his phone, unlocked it, and nearly dropped it as he went online to try and find his PIN number. Once he did, he gave it to the officer. She wrote it down and Nicky felt a swell of residual anxiety build in his chest. 

He took a deep breath and looked over to see Bread-Man stumble off up the street, breathing hard. The man rested his arm against a bin for a minute, seemed to steel himself, and then continued. Nicky wanted nothing more than to go to him, to see if he was alright. 

“Somebody will contact you.” Nicky dragged his eyes away from Bread-Man to see the officer motioning to the front of this bus. “This will be classified as a traffic accident, you’ll need to give a more formal statement in the next few days.” 

“Okay, thanks,” Nicky stole another look at Bread-Man, unable to take his eyes off him for too long. He looked back to the scene reluctantly. “And the driver? I know I probably won’t be able to know anything about how he is but, if the family wants to, I would like to know how he gets on.”

“We’ll be speaking to them, you might hear something - you might not.” 

“It’s okay,” Nicky replied. “I know the drill, I just wanted to ask.” 

The officer’s demeanor softened and she reached out and touched Nicky’s arm gently. “You did some good today,” she said and gave him an incident card with a contact number on it. “Try to enjoy the rest of your day.” 

“Thanks,” Nicky replied even though it didn’t feel like it. He turned and looked back up the street to see Bread-Man sitting on the kerb further up, his head dipped between his knees. A note of panic flashed through Nicky - he needed to at least speak to him and make sure he was okay. A strange kind of connection had been built up between them in the months they had silently taken the same journey together. This was now solidified under less than ideal circumstances. It had been rough for the man, he knew that. Nicky made up his mind and hurried up the street towards him. He hoped this wasn’t weird, but the least thing he could do was make sure Bread-Man was going to be okay.   
  
  


Joe wasn’t okay. 

In the aftermath, after he had given his statement to the police officer, Joe walked up the street a little further up from where the paramedics and police swarmed around the bus. The flashing blue lights of the ambulance, the concerned voices of the passengers, the red brake lights of the cars stuck in the traffic jam made his eyes hurt. Everything was just a bit too much. He had to get away for a few minutes. His hands shook, and as he walked he realised his legs were shaking as well. A wave of vertigo passed through him and he reached out for something, anything, instinctively. Finding nothing, Joe sat down - well, more flopped down - hard on the edge of the kerb. 

Panic rose in his chest and suddenly he realised suddenly he couldn’t breathe. It was hot - too hot for the relatively chill morning. Then, suddenly; as freezing as if it was December. A voice in his head whispered: _yup, this it is - you are for sure dying, nothing we can do now._ Gradually it was drowned out by the rational part of his brain, one he had trained over the years saying: _it’s okay, just breathe through it, it’s just panic, just panic_. Immediately, vertigo hit him again. The tightness in his chest intensified as the world began to spin. 

Joe leaned his head down in between his knees and tried to calm himself. _Okay - in through the nose and out through the mouth - nice and slowly._ _It was alright, he was alright - just focus on the breathing. Focus on breathing even if it feels like the hardest thing in the world._ He reached up and felt the pulse in his neck, fast but strong and present, proof he was still alive. 

A hand touched his shoulder gently. Still, Joe flinched and yelped. 

“Sorry, are you okay?” the voice asked, soft and calm, Italian accented. It had lost that direct and purposeful tone in which it had directed the events on the bus, but it remained just as reassuring. Joe tried to take a breath to allow himself to get some words out, but instead his voice came out as a strangled gasp. Bus-Man stared at him with his big blue-green eyes as Joe babbled incoherently. “Oh, uh -” Bus-Man said, seeming a little unsure before he quickly switched to that calm focus again. “Do you want me to get the paramedics to look you over?” Bus-Man looked over to where the ambulance was parked.

“No, no,” he managed to force out. “It’s just a panic attack.” He breathed in deeply again. “I get them, I can -” He exhaled again, slowly through his nose. “Usually manage them.” 

Bus Man sat down next to him on the kerb. He wrung his hands together as if he didn’t really know what to do, as if he wanted to reach out to Joe and offer him physical comfort. 

“It’s never _just_ a panic attack,” he said and then softer: “What helps?” 

Joe leant his head further in between his legs as a wave of nausea flooded over him and his stomach did a flip. It took everything in his power not to gag. He’d rather not throw up in front of Bus-Man, _especially_ after doing CPR for the first time in his life, and while still not knowing the man’s name. 

“Just stay here and save me if I die,” he said through gasps, trying to force out a laugh to lighten the situation. 

“Okay,” Bus-Man said, as if he sensed the mood.“I’m here.” 

They sat next to each other on the kerb as Joe managed to calm his breathing. He opened his eyes and counted the cars: okay _three silver ones, two black ones, two red ones._ The concrete felt hard under his legs. He could smell sausage rolls cooking in the bakery up the street. He put his finger back onto his pulse and felt it slow down slightly. _It was okay. He was here. He was breathing. He was alive._

The sound of a zip opening and closing drew Joe fully back into the scene. He looked over at Bus-Man, still sat next to him, now quiet and still. In his hand he held a small carton of orange juice and offered it to Joe. It was one of the small ones like Joe’s kids had at break time - from his lunch maybe? “Would this help?” Bus-Man asked with concern written in his voice. 

“Maybe,” Joe replied, voice still a little shaky. His mouth and throat were dry and his tongue felt heavy in his mouth. It was Ramadan and the sun was already up - but Joe felt like he was going to pass out if he didn’t drink something. Bus-Man opened the little straw, punctured the carton, and passed it across to Joe to take a sip. The juice was slightly warm but it did make him feel better. 

Joe looked down at his shaking hands again. His whole body trembled but he was present again. Breathing was no longer the hardest thing in the world; it no longer felt as if he was failing to cling onto a cliff-edge - dangling over the precipice ready to fall. 

“I’m okay,” he said, even though he didn’t feel like it. He looked over to Bus-Man, concern written over his _very_ handsome features. “I realise - I’ve not asked your name.” 

Bus-Man turned to him and his worried expression broke into a small smile. It was closed-mouthed, but it still reached his eyes. He held out a hand to Joe. As he took it, tremors continued through into Joe’s hand - Bus-Man was shaking just as hard as him. 

“Nicolo,” he said. “I usually get Nicky though.”

“Yusuf,” Joe replied. “Although I usually get Joe.” 

The conversation floundered as if the revelation of their names had brought some kind of fey-magic down upon the scene. After seeing each other and not speaking for so long, and then going through what they had just gone through - it seemed like words had lost all their power. 

“Is this the first time you have done anything like that?” Bus-Man - _no_ Nicky - asked after a while, breaking the silence. 

“Yeah,” Joe said, looking back to the ambulance, trying not to imagine what was going on there. The paramedics were all in the back now - the bus driver on a stretcher covered a mass of wires and straps and everything Joe _really_ didn’t want to think about. “I mean - I do my first aid training every year. I’m a teacher. But, I’ve never had to use it beyond putting a few plasters on knees. A kid broke his arm once - that’s the worst I’ve had to deal with.” Joe stopped himself, realising he was babbling. “You - uh - you seemed very competent.” 

“I’m a nurse,” Nicky said. “PICU. Uh, paediatric intensive care,” Nicky continued, when he noticed Joe was looking at him with a confused expression. 

“It makes sense, you probably deal with this all the time.”

“Doesn’t make it any easier,” Nicky said. Joe felt a spike dig into his heart, worried he’d said something wrong. 

“Oh, sorry, no - I didn’t mean to imply that,” Joe replied, rubbing the back of his neck in the way he always did when he was nervous. 

“No - no,” Nicky spoke quickly, gesturing with his hands. He stilled. “It just feels different when you are not at work.” 

“I get that.”

“I would - uh - I would like to take you to get a stiff drink or something. Or a cup of tea?” 

“No alcohol,” Joe said and pointed to himself. “Muslim, It’s Ramadan.” He shrugged his shoulders ‘I’ll take the offer of tea though, sometime later tonight.” He looked at his watch, thinking of how work would be worried and the head-teacher would be annoyed at him if he wasn’t there to take the register. "I have to go to work soon.” 

“Same,” Nicky said. “I am already late.” He reached into his pocket and brought out his phone. “Shall we get food or something tonight? I just -” he paused for a second and looked down at his phone again. “I want to make sure you are okay.” 

Joe’s stomach did a little flip, in a happy way rather than the anxious way it had before. “Yeah, that would be great actually, I’d like that.” 

They exchanged numbers. Joe gave Nicky his first and then smiled as a text popped up on his phone. 

“I finish at eight,” Nicky said. “Happy to meet you after then - somewhere nearby the hospital? Will that be okay for you to eat something?” 

“Sounds great,” Joe replied. Nicky stood up and held his hand out to him, pulling Joe up from the kerb. His grip was strong even with the slight trembling which still ran through them both. They stood and looked back over to the scene; the ambulance was pulling away from the side of the road, blue lights flashing and sirens blaring. The police officer was starting to direct the cars around the bus. Another bus had pulled up to take the passengers onto their destinations. As they walked back to the bus, Nicky typed a message on his phone. “Will he be alright?” Joe asked. 

Nicky looked up from his phone and looked around, a forlorn expression on his face. 

“Well, statistics for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests are not good.” Nicky began. “We used the defib so-” He paused for a second, thinking. “Chances are better.” Joe’s heart dropped to his stomach, and Nicky cut himself off as he saw his expression. “Oh - I am sure he will be fine!” 

They stood together a bit awkwardly on the street, neither really wanting to get on the new bus. Nicky glanced at his phone again. Joe wondered if he was distracting him from something. He slipped his phone into his pocket. “Sorry I was just texting my manager.” Nicky indicated up the street. “I am close enough to walk from here,” Nicky said. “I think I need the fresh air.”

“I’m going to get a taxi.” Joe indicated to the rank outside the Heron Foods. “I’m late enough already.” 

They stood facing each other, not really knowing what to say. Nicky held his hand out awkwardly again and Joe shook it. 

“See you tonight,” Nicky said. “I’ll text you.” 

“See you tonight,” Joe replied. 

“I’ll see you later,” Nicky appeared to be stalling, then shook himself out of it. “Bye, Joe.”

“Bye, Nicky.” It felt weird in his mouth, familiar and comfortable but also alien and unusual at the same time as if he was an ancient God who had just given a name to one of his creations and set it free into the world. 

Joe watched Nicky go. He walked off with his slightly awkward gait until he was out of sight. Joe rubbed his face, feeling the beginnings of a headache. His head felt as if it had been pumped full of lead and he couldn’t remember a time he last felt so tired, but he made himself walk to the taxi-rank and get into one of the cars. Anxiety still clawed at the side of his mind and everything just felt a little wrong, as if this part of the world had lost its safety today. As if death and pain itself had broken through the curtain of bland urban life and ripped it apart, revealing the fragile nature of everything. Joe hated it, he hated how off-centre it made him feel. The world now felt like a Hall of Mirrors, everything turned into a distorted reflection of itself.

Looking out the window of the taxi at a world which felt inexorably changed, Joe hoped the thought of seeing Nicky again tonight would be enough to power him through the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for: description of a panic attack, pretty graphic description of CPR, medical detail. 
> 
> I am using the dates/times for Ramadan in 2019 in the UK. As always let me know if there are any inaccuracies. 
> 
> So... our boys have finally met and talked to each other. Let's see where we go from here...


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everybody for all your very kind comments on the last chapter, they all really made me smile. 
> 
> No specific extra trigger warnings for this chapter - however, let me know if anything needs to be tagged.

In the back of the taxi, Joe found the school’s number in his phone and pressed dial. Even the sound of the phone ringing against his ear was a bit too much and he found himself tapping out a rhythm on the plastic side of the door. The driver eyed him up in the rearview mirror. 

“Hello,” came the voice of the receptionist down the line. “ Are you alright, Joe? You're usually in for Breakfast Club now.” 

“Hey Carolyn,” he said. “Yeah, I’m _fine._ ” He put a heavy emphasis on that word. “I just had a bit of a situation coming in this morning. I’m okay. I just don’t think I’ll make the Breakfast Club though, is there somebody who can cover it?”

“Yeah.” He heard her typing in the background. “I think Marjorie has got it covered this morning - it’s just one morning.” It dawned on Joe that he was breathing heavily into the phone and he brought it away from his mouth. 

“Okay good, I just -” Joe’s words floundered and he coughed, trying to regulate his breathing again. 

“Are you sure you're alright?” Carolyn’s voice rose in tone, questioning.

“Yeah, yeah - I’m okay.” Joe knew he said this too quickly. By the sound of the slight click of her throat on the line as she cleared it, Joe could tell that she knew something was up. 

“Do you want me to put Diane on, Joe?” 

Joe took another deep breath. _In through the nose, out through the mouth._

“Yeah, Carolyn, that might be best.” 

“Okay, I’ll transfer you.” 

The phone started to play a familiar jaunty musical track. Almost immediately it clicked into an answer. 

“Hello, Joe,” Diane, the headteacher, said. “How can I help?” 

“I’m fine,” Joe said a bit too quickly, not really answering her question. He didn’t feel fine. “I’m just in a taxi coming in, I had a bit of a situation on the bus this morning.” 

“Are you alright?” she asked, her voice concerned. “What happened?” 

“Oh -” Joe’s words stuck in his throat. “Oh well, this morning when I was coming in, the bus driver had this collapse. A heart attack I think. He wasn’t breathing. Luckily there was a nurse on board, but nobody else knew CPR so I had to - y’know...” Joe’s words spilled out of him, fast and breathlessly. He bit at his bottom lip, worried that if he said any more he would burst into tears. 

“Holy shit, Joe,” she said. Joe was a bit taken aback. He’d only ever heard her swear once, and that was when the Year Six cricket team had got to the regional finals only to be bested by one of the private schools. From the side of the field, she had insisted they were all ‘fucking cheating fucks’. A hysterical laugh tried to rise to the back of Joe’s throat at the memory. “Look do you need to take the day? You can have it off sick,” she continued. “You sound a bit shaken.” 

Joe thought about it. 

“No Diane, I’ll come in.” He brushed his free hand through his curls, up across the sweat still beading on his forehead. “I’ve got that meeting about Carter later which I really need to be there for. Aya’s one-to-one is still sick so I’ll...” 

Diane took a deep breath on the end of the phone. The sound of somebody else talking in the background drifted down the line. 

“Okay, Joe. If you are sure,” she said.

“Yeah, I am.” At the back of his mind, Joe knew it would be better to go into school. If he didn’t he would just sit at home alone, replaying the events of the morning in his head over and over again until they sent him tumbling into another full-blown panic attack. At least at school, he would be distracted. 

“Okay, I’ve got to go, Joe.” She cleared her throat as if she wasn’t sure what to say. “Just let reception know when you get in, I’ll get your TA to cover your register.” 

“Okay,” Joe said. “Thank you.” 

His phone beeped as she cut off the line on the other end. Joe looked up to see the taxi driver looking at him in the mirror. He’d very obviously been listening to Joe’s conversation.

“Sounds like a rough morning, mate.” 

“Oh, yeah,” Joe replied. A heavy silence fell between them, filled by the sounds of Desi music playing on the radio. 

“My brother’s a paramedic,” the taxi driver continued, again looking into the rearview mirror and trying to make eye contact. 

“Oh, right?” Joe continued. He looked away and flicked through his phone, going rapidly between Facebook, to Twitter, to Instagram, to BBC News, to Buzzfeed for some reason. He wanted to do anything rather than talk about this more. 

“Yeah, he says that having a cardiac arrest outside of hospital - one of the things you definitely don’t want to happen to you...” 

“Oh, really?” Joe tapped his foot against the carpeted floor of the car. _Okay, this_ really _wasn’t helping. This was the last thing he needed right now._

“Hey, least you knew CPR though, mate. In most cases a lot of people don’t, so he’s got a better chance... poor sod.” 

“Mmhmm.” Joe continued his rapid app scrolling, trying to fill his mind with _something,_ anything else. _Okay, a video of a cat. That wasn’t helping. The football scores? Also not helping._ Joe scrolled Twitter rapidly, not really reading any of the text on the page, then moved over to Instagram. _Some friends from uni having a baby shower. A scam advert for sunglasses. Some muscled influencer on a motorbike he wasn’t even sure why he had followed._ Joe squinted at the man on the screen draped over the bike. _Okay, how did he even bend his back like that to get his ass to stick out the way it did?_ Joe puzzled over the physics of it for a few minutes until the images from the bus began to rise back into his mind again. The taxi-driver continued talking about his brother and the ambulance service. Joe was only half-listening instead focusing on trying not to fall headfirst into another anxiety attack. He switched apps again and again, tried to focus on the screen, and attempted to let the quick flicking between colours and sounds and shapes soothe him a little. 

Eventually, the taxi pulled up outside the school. Joe paid and thanked the taxi-driver. He stood outside for a moment and breathed in through his nose and mouth again. Suddenly, he was back on the floor of the bus, feeling a man’s chest compressed beneath his overlocked hands, his skin still warm but seemingly cooling, an unnatural blue tinge around his mouth. Joe clasped at his own chest and leaned against the wall. _Okay, his heart-rate was too fast, the world was going blurry again._ In his head, a steady count of one to thirty echoed like a beat. A morbid song he just couldn’t get rid of. 

Joe reached into his pocket for his phone again and did what he always did when he was feeling overwhelmed - he called his mum. 

The phone rang a few times before she answered. 

“Hey mama,” he said in Arabic, finally letting his voice shake. 

“Yusuf?” He could immediately sense the anxiety in her voice. “Yusuf are you alright - shouldn’t you be at the school already?” 

“Yeah, mama. I’m fine, don’t worry. Everybody is fine. I just had a bit of a run in on my way in this morning -” 

She gasped on the other end of the line and then launched into speaking at a rapid pace. 

“Yusuf, tell me what happened. Did somebody mug you? I told you you leave too early when it’s still dark in the winter. Those streets around where you live aren’t _safe_. You really should get a car again, you can get a second-hand one...” 

“No, no, mama, don’t worry,” Joe interjected, trying to calm her down. “Nobody mugged me. Just the driver on the bus collapsed this morning, I umm, I had to do the -” Joe motioned the movement for chest compressions even though he knew his mother wouldn’t be able to see. He sniffed and realised that he was starting to cry, the tension and emotion of the morning finally spilling over. He walked a little up the road so that he could duck into the alleyway next to the car-park where nobody would see him. 

“Oh, Yusuf...” He heard the sound of pots clanking. “That sounds awful. Were there other people there?” 

Joe smiled sadly at the thought of her in the kitchen in the house in Rotterdam, most likely already starting to put things together for the Iftar meal in the evening before she started on the accounts. He inhaled deeply but it came out more like a sob. Finally, Joe let the tears fall down his face. It was good to get it out. 

“Yeah, there was this really nice nurse, he kinda guided me through what to do. He was so calm... I’m okay,” he said, through the tears. “I’m just a bit shaken that’s all.” 

Down the phone, his mother made the soft shushing noises she used to make when he was a kid and woke from a nightmare. He would plod through to their bedroom, sniffly and shaky to curl up against her as she soothed him. 

“Oh _habibi,_ don’t cry” she said. “I’m pleased somebody else was there. I’m not surprised you are shaken though.” 

“Yeah,” Joe sobbed again, unable to stop himself now he had started. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “I feel stupid. Why am I crying?” 

“It’s not stupid,’ his mother replied. “It’s not stupid, Yusuf. It’s okay to be shaken by it.” 

“I know, mama, I know” Joe sniffed deeply and reached into his pocket for a tissue to blow his nose. “I’m actually meeting with the nurse who helped tonight. He wanted to make sure I was okay - I had a bit of a panic afterward.” 

“Oh, Yusuf. That will be good I think to talk about it. As long as you are okay now.” Joe could tell by her tone of voice that she knew that he wasn’t. Her tone shifted, a signal she was moving onto practical matters. “Are you going to work?” 

“Yeah, I am. Got a lot to do.” 

“It’ll probably be a good distraction,” his mother said. “Take your mind off it. You’ll call me again if you feel bad though, right? If things start to catch up with you.” 

“Yeah, yeah, of course, mama. Look I should probably go. I just - I needed to call you. I’m a bit of a mess right now.” Joe dabbed at his eyes and face. He needed to make himself look presentable for going back into the school. 

“Anytime, Yusuf. You know I’m always here.” Joe smiled at that, through the thick and the thin - he knew that she was. 

“I’ll have to go, mama,” he said. He blew his nose again and scrunched the tissue up into his pocket. “Thank you. I love you.” 

“I love you too.” 

Joe clicked the phone off and took another deep breath. He wiped his eyes again and blew his nose. _Okay. Hopefully, he didn’t look too much of a mess._ Slowly, he walked up to the reception doors and scanned his ID badge. The doors clicked and then slid open. He waved to the receptionist as he walked through and signed in. His legs still felt heavy, and he was still shaking. But he had a job to do. Joe hoped that it would be enough to keep his mind from racing, even just for the morning.

He walked to his classroom and pushed open the door. His class was already seated on the carpet and Mrs Abebe sat at the front of the class doing the register. Thirty faces turned around to look at him as he entered. 

Joe took another deep breath, pushed his worries down, and switched to his happy teacher voice. 

“Good morning class,’ he said. “Sorry I am late, but I see Mrs Abebe was here to help. Let’s start the morning, shall we...” 

So, the morning started. 

Nicky hated it when he felt like his mornings got off to a bad start. 

He scanned his ID badge against the panel next to the double doors of the unit. Nicky breathed heavily and his hands still shook. The adrenaline had carried him all the way to the hospital, to the changing rooms, out of his clothes and into scrubs, and now to the doors. He already felt sweaty under his arms. He hated being late and his heart still pounded from the events of the morning. 

The doors beeped and swung open. Nicky rushed through only to nearly collide with Quynh who appeared to be lying in wait for him. She placed a hand on his chest, holding him back. 

“Nu-uh,” she said, firmly. “If you think you are going straight onto the unit after the morning you have had, you have another thing coming.” 

“But -” Nicky protested. 

“Katrina’s patient is wardable, so she’s doubling up until you get back. I want to make sure you are okay first.” 

“I’m -”

Quynh held her hand up to shush him. 

“Nicky -” She splayed her hand across his chest on the left side and looked him up and down. “Your heart’s beating like crazy, you’re trembling, you’re sweating.” She looked down. “And your shoes are on the wrong feet.” 

Nicky looked down at his feet. 

“Oh -” 

She steered him into the Sisters’ office and motioned for him to sit down in the computer chair behind the desk. Nicky did. He suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. Quynh took a seat on the harder plastic chair opposite. On her desk sat a cup of tea in a large mug decorated with pink cartoon hearts. She pushed it towards him. 

“Drink that,” she said. 

Nicky took a sip. The tea was strong and sickeningly sweet, almost cloying on his tongue. 

“God, Quynh,” he gasped. “How many sugars did you put in that?” 

Quynh leaned back in her chair, still looking at him intently. 

“Three.” She motioned for him to drink. “Drink it, it’ll make you feel better.” 

Nicky continued to sip at the tea. It did help. The sweetness and warmth calmed him. He slipped his work shoes off and switched them around onto the correct feet. Nicky looked up to see Quynh still watching him. 

“What happened then?” she asked, voice calm and measured. Her debrief voice. “So the driver just collapsed and then - _Fuck,_ Nicky.” Nicky nodded, he couldn’t really remember much, it was a blur of compressions and noise and movement. “What a morning. How are you feeling?” 

Nicky took another sip from the tea, his knees shook less now and his heart rate had slowed. 

“I’m okay. It was just -. I don’t know, it is difficult doing something like that outside of work when it’s unexpected.” 

Quynh reached across the table and placed her hand on Nicky’s arm. 

“It is,” she said. “Did anybody else know CPR?” 

‘Yeah, one other man. He’d done first aid training at work. He said he was a teacher. Somebody else got the defib, luckily there was one nearby.” Nicky scrubbed his hand across his face, it still felt difficult to talk about, the events hazy and shadowed. “This is going to sound crazy Quynh, but the other man was Bread-Man.” 

Quynh let out a startled little laugh. 

“It could only happen to you, Nicky.” She looked at him with a quizzical expression. “So you talked to him?” 

"A man has had a cardiac arrest. He’s probably dead or... I don’t know, fighting his way through surgery in-. His family. _God_ ,” Nicky’s voice cut off. Quynh’s face fell, solemn. Then she made a small noise at the back of her throat as if she was encouraging him to get to the point. “I got his number -” Nicky blurted out and then looked down, slightly ashamed.

Quynh burst out laughing and slapped her knee. 

“Nicolo di Genova, you _minx_.” 

“Oh, _do_ shut up,” Nicky rolled his eyes. “It’s not like that. After, he had some kind of panic or bad anxiety attack. I thought for a moment I was going to have to start doing CPR on him as well. I’m making sure he is okay. He’d never done CPR before. It’s traumatic when you are not used to it.” 

Quynh smiled and raised an eyebrow. 

“You have his number though?” 

“And I’m meeting him tonight to talk about what happened.” 

“It’s a date then,” Quynh laughed.

“Oh _please._ He’s probably not even gay,” Nicky said. “And like I said, it’s not like that. I want to make sure he’s okay. He wasn’t in a good way after, I felt bad even leaving him this morning. 

“You’re a good person, Nicky.” Quynh stretched, glanced at the clock on the wall, and stood up. “You did some good today, no matter the outcome. It’ll have shaken you, but try to hold onto that fact. You gave him a chance.” Nicky went to stand up as well, but Quynh motioned for him to stay seated. “Take some time,” she said. “Finish your tea and come out onto the unit when you are ready.” 

Nicky nodded. 

“I will do, thanks Quynh.” 

After she left the office, Nicky sunk back into the chair. The residual tiredness left behind after the rush of adrenaline threatened to overwhelm him now. He took another sip of the tea and swallowed it down, forcing himself to drink it. With a sigh, he reached into the front pocket of his backpack and brought out his phone. No messages. Nicky thought about texting his dad, letting him know what had happened. _No - it would only stress him out, unnecessary worry he really didn’t need._ He’d tell him about it on Wednesday when he usually called. Instead, he looked at the message thread now labeled with Yusuf (Joe). There were two messages, his message saying “Hi, it’s Nicolo” and then a thumbs up emoji from Joe. Nicky took a deep breath and typed. “Hey, I have been thinking about you...” _No, that sounded slightly creepy._ Nicky deleted it and then typed: “Wow... crazy morning...” _No, that sounded too jovial._ Instead, he just simply typed: ‘Hope you are alright?’. Nicky took a deep breath and sent the message. 

Nicky drained the last of the tea, straightened out his scrub top, and adjusted his fob watch where he had affixed it crooked. He walked to the next set of double doors leading to the main unit and scanned his badge again. As he waited for them to open, Nicky inhaled and steeled himself to face the day. 

Joe exhaled as he finished telling a condensed version of the story to Booker. 

“Sounds like a _day_ ,” he said. “Jesus Christ, Joe.” Booker’s skin was paler than Joe had seen it for a while and the skin under his eyes was blotchy and purple. 

Joe pulled his coat tighter around himself. He was still shivering even though it was hours after the incident and much warmer outside. It was morning break. Children ran around before then, darting across the playground, shouting and playing. When he was in the classroom, Joe had felt like the walls were starting to close in around him during the end of the phonics lesson. He took a deep breath. It felt good to be outside, feel the air on his skin, in his lungs, proof he _could_ still breathe. 

“I’m alright, honestly.” 

“Are you though, seriously?” Booker asked. Joe looked out over the playground, the children running back and forth. Booker stepped forward and raised his hand as two children in parkas collided with each other in a cacophony of noises. “Dylan, no, leave Declan alone.” He turned with an almost psychic sense of perception to see a little girl scrambling at the metal fence. “Masie - we don’t _climb the fence._ ” She looked over sheepishly and stepped down. 

“I’m okay, Book,” Joe replied. “I’m just - It’s shaken me a bit.” 

Booker looked down at his feet and scraped a loose bit of the tarmaced playground underneath his toes. Joe watched as he scratched a wobbly circle into the ground. 

“No doubt, Joe.” Booker stopped playing with the stone under his foot. He turned back to Joe, shoulders hunched, expression drawn. “So, do you think the Bus Driver will be okay?” 

Joe hung his head and remembered what Bus-Man - no _Nicky,_ _he had a name now_ \- had said when they were standing on the pavement. He didn’t seem to think his chances were good. He was a nurse after all - if anybody knew it would be Nicky. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “The nurse who was there as well didn’t seem too hopeful for the man. He said something about stats or something -” 

“God, he sounds like a right C-3PO.” 

Joe looked up, perplexed. 

“What?” 

“From Star Wars y’know.” Book started to do robot movements with his arms and affected an upper-crust British accent. “Our chances of survival are less than three thousand seven hundred and twenty to one, boopdeboop” 

Joe scrunched his face up, sometimes Booker was an ass. He didn’t mean it, it was just the way he was. 

“ _V_ _a te faire foutre,_ Booker" Joe hissed under his breath. "I _know_ he’s from Star Wars. He just - He wasn’t like that.” Joe paused, thinking back to Nicky’s calm demeanor, but also the way his hands had shaken against his own afterwards. “He was nice. He helped.”

Book smiled. As his smiles never did now - it didn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“Well, I’m pleased he was there, somebody who knew what he was doing at least. I would have had no clue what to do in that situation.” 

“Yeah, he was helpful.” Joe looked out across the playground to see Carter with another child in a headlock. “Carter _no,_ leave Jason alone.” They broke away from each other and sulked off sullenly in opposite directions. Joe watched them out of the corner of his eye, making sure there was no more trouble. “You’ll never guess who it was though, Book. It’s Bus-Man.” 

Booker let out a choked little laugh. 

“It could only happen to you, Yusuf.” 

“I’m meeting him tonight,” Joe said, his voice barely above a quiet hiss. 

“On a _date_ ,” Book clapped Joe hard on the back. “Jesus Christ, what a way to meet. Well, it’ll be something to tell the grandkids.” 

Joe snorted. 

“It’s not a _date_ ,” he said scornfully. “Book, come on. He’s some random guy on the bus.” _Who I’ve been lusting after for the past three months. Who I_ definitely _didn’t imagine was fucking me during some hookup._ “He’s probably not even gay and if he is well - he’s probably got a boyfriend or not interested or...” Book rolled his eyes and Joe slapped him on the arm. “Listen, I had a bit of a panic attack after everything, he made sure I was okay. He’s just checking I’m alright. It doesn’t mean anything.” 

“Hmm, bet he wants to check something else out as well.” 

Joe slapped Book on the arm again, lightly so the children wouldn't notice and get any bad ideas. 

“Get your mind out of the gutter.” 

A loud shout came up from the playground as a group of children all piled on top of each other in a whirlwind of arms and legs. Joe pointed to it. 

“Do you want to go and sort that out or shall I?” 

“I’ll go,” Book said. “You’ve had a rough morning, have a stand there and get some rest.” He made off across the playground to see what was going on. He turned back when he was almost halfway and winked. “Might need all the rest you can get before tonight.” 

Joe wished he wasn’t in a playground full of children so he could flip Booker off as he walked away. He watched as Booker went over to the group. He seemed to manage to sort things out. Joe sighed and reached into his pocket for his phone. There was a text from his mum, saying that she hoped his morning was going okay. _Bless her, she would be worried. Maybe he shouldn’t have rung her in a state this morning._ He looked down to see a message from Nicky reading: ‘Hope you are alright?' 

Joe smiled at his phone and felt his cheeks grow hot. _No. Nicky was just being nice, being caring. He had a duty to do that as a nurse right? Part of their code or something?_ Still, his heart couldn’t help but dream. 

He hovered his fingers over the keyboard. _Should he be honest or try to play it cool?_ In the end, Joe settled on honesty. ‘A bit shaken still', he typed. ‘Better than this morning though’. He paused and wrote: ‘Thank you for looking after me’, then deleted it, then typed it out again. ‘Thank you for looking after me, I’m a bit embarrassed. Will be good to talk tonight'. 

Joe sent the message and slipped his phone back into his pocket. The school bell rang and he called for his class to line up in front of him. It was okay. He has his day planned, he had his routine. 

_He would get through it._

Nicky was getting through it 

The routine and business of the day soon had him feeling more grounded again. Nicky placed his bag down on the floor next to the hard plastic cafeteria chair he sat down on. He’d come to the cafeteria mostly to hide from his fellow staff members. Everybody, as usual, wanted to hear the story of what had happened that morning. Nicky didn’t want to rehash the story over and over again. So, he’d made the excuse of going to get a cappuccino and some fresh air and gone to collect his thoughts. 

Nicky reached into his bag and brought out his phone to see a text from Joe. He read the words on the screen and smiled to himself. ‘Don’t be embarrassed', Nicky texted back. ‘You had a completely normal reaction - I’m pleased you are feeling a little better. Also looking forward to tonight’. 

Nicky took a sip from his cappuccino and a bite from his sandwich. A de-brief, that was what he was doing tonight. When something traumatic happens, you have a debrief, to talk about it and help process it. Joe needed that and Nicky was going to provide it. It was nothing more and nothing less. He shouldn’t start making it into something it wasn’t.

Even so, at the back of his mind, Nicky couldn’t help but dream. Even after all the stress of the day, maybe _especially_ because of it - all Nicky really wanted was for Bread-Man, _no -_ Joe, to wrap his arms around him. He wanted to feel again what it was like to be held. He wanted to brush Joe’s curls out of his eyes and tell him that everything was going to be okay. Maybe lean in and press his lips to Joe’s... 

Nicky took another bite from his sandwich, it was nice to dream. However, this was real life and in real life dreams very rarely become reality. 

The sound of a familiar Welsh accented voice drew Nicky’s attention firmly back to reality. He looked over to the line beside the serving hatch and saw Owain standing in a small group of other Anesthetists, laughing and joking. He looked small in his green scrubs, a rainbow lanyard around his neck. His hair was cut shorter than when Nicky had last seen him, shaved in at the sides now and longer on top. 

_Fuck._

Nicky considered running, just grabbing his stuff and making a bee-line for the exit. _No that would draw more attention to himself._ He’d also have to pass Owain to get to the exit. Nicky snuck another glance over to Owain. He’d got a new pair of glasses, round ones with thicker frames. They didn’t suit his face-shape and, Nicky thought a little spitefully, made him look like a surprised owl. 

Owain turned a little, angling himself more towards Nicky to talk to the doctor next to him. Quickly, Nicky placed his backpack on the table and tried to hide behind it. 

As he hid behind his backpack, Nicky was seized by the thought that this was so utterly stupid. He’d spent eight years of his life with Owain. They’d shared everything. He’d been with him through highs and lows. Hell, they’d been both of each other’s first times. He remembered their cozy lazy mornings, the early days of getting off the train - smiling when he saw Owain waiting behind the ticket barrier, and the sex... Fuck, the sex was so fucking good. But he also remembered Owain’s silences, heavy and brooding, that left Nicky scrambling mentally to try and figure out what he had done wrong, the gap which seemed to grow between them, the distance near the end which Nicky never knew how to fill. Nicky’s heart pounded in his chest. The pain was lesser now, chronic rather than acute, a dull ache rather than a relentless tearing. However, whenever Owain came into his orbit again, all those feelings he thought he had dealt with and processed returned. 

Nicky peeped from behind his backpack again. When he looked at Owain now, he almost didn’t recognise him. He looked so different from the man who occupied so many of his memories. Even now, he felt like the memories were fading, the colour draining out of Owain, until he became black and white, then translucent, then... completely gone. 

As he watched, Nicky saw Owain look over. In a split second their eyes met. Owain’s eyes widened in the way they always did when he was surprised. Then, his face fell and he looked down at his feet.

 _Yeah, look away,_ a spiteful voice in Nicky’s head said. _Look away, you_ _coward._

Nicky also dragged his eyes away and looked back down at his phone. No more texts from Joe. _God, was he waiting for texts now?_

Thankfully, Owain didn’t come over to him. He just bought his food and left with the other doctors. Nicky returned back to his food, feeling a little bit more unsettled than he did before. Suddenly, his sandwich didn’t seem as appetising. 

His phone buzzed on the table. He looked down to see a text from Joe. 

‘Pleased it seemed like a normal reaction,’ after this was a smiling emoji with a little sweat drop. ‘Realised I haven’t even asked how you are?’ 

Nicky smiled at his phone and began to type again. 

‘On my break now', he wrote. ‘I’m feeling okay, a bit shaken but that is normal’. 

Three dots crossed the screen as Joe started typing. 

‘Late break. Lunch or dinner? Pleased you are alright’, the message read. Another appeared on the screen. ‘Kids have just left the school - marking time now’. 

Nicky smiled at his phone again. Texting Joe came quite easily. He looked up at the time at the top of the screen. Nearly time for him to go back. 

‘Some weird lunch/dinner hybrid. Gotta go back now’, Nicky typed. ‘Looking forward to tonight’. 

He sent the message, drained the last of his cappuccino, picked up his bag, and headed back to the Unit. 

Joe entered back into his empty classroom with a stack of photocopied worksheets for the next day. He placed them down on his desk and then drew his phone out of his pocket. Out of curiosity, he looked at the last message Nicky had sent to him. He smiled again, then went back to the contacts to do what he had meant to do. He found Hassan and Amir’s number, pressed the button to video call, and waited for it to connect. They would both be preparing the food for the Iftar meal tonight. Joe sat down on his desk chair, the corridor outside his classroom was dark. Apart from the caretaker, he was likely the last one in the school now.

“Hello, Hassan,” Joe said as the video clicked in. Behind him, distorted into pixels, he could see Hassan’s and Amir’s small kitchen, the benches piled high with bowls and pans. 

“Hello, Yusuf,” Hassan said. Amir popped up behind his shoulder from where he was stirring a pot on the stovetop. He waved and also said: 

“Hi, Yusuf.” 

Joe propped his phone up against the stack of books on his desk. 

“Just to say that I am not going to be able to make it for Iftar tonight,” 

“You alright, Yusuf?” Hassan’s face crinkled with concern. Amir looked up from where he was starting to roll out some chapattis and came up behind Hassan, wrapping an arm around his waist. 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Joe twiddled with the pot of pens on his desk. 

“You don’t look it,” Amir said, his voice soft. “You look distressed, son.” 

Joe knew he couldn’t lie to them - he’d known them too long. 

“Had a bit of a run in this morning - it’s shaken me up a little bit.” 

On the video, Hassan’s face shifted, showing his concern. 

“Police?” Hassan said, then more desperately. “Yusuf, tell me.” As a gay, British-Iranian man who had spent the eighties heavily involved in both gay and labour activism - this was always the first place Hassan’s mind went to whenever anybody said they had had trouble. Thinking about it too much made Joe’s heart ache a little bit. 

“No, no,” Joe said, gesticulating to show that he was okay. “Not that, don’t worry. The bus driver collapsed when I was traveling in this morning.” Joe rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease out the tension which had settled there. “I ended up having to do CPR on him,” he continued. “I’m _fine_ , though.” 

“Oh, Yusuf,” Hassan said. 

Amir gasped behind Hassan and clasped a hand to his face. “Oh, sweetie,” he added. Behind the two of them on the screen, something began to sizzle in a pan and Amir darted over to the stovetop again. 

“There was somebody there to help. A nurse. I had a bit of a panic afterwards...” How many times had he said this story today: four times, five times? Every time it felt like the story was simultaneously taking on a life of its own, pushing him out like a splinter while also dragging him further in, a vortex, a whirlpool, spiraling... Joe gripped the edge of his desk as his vision began to swim again. Even talking about it felt like trying to walk through a pool of molten lead. 

“I’m pleased somebody was there,” Hassan said. Everybody kept saying that as if it was a comfort. It was in a small way, Joe supposed. “I’m sorry you had to do that Yusuf, hopefully the driver will be okay.” 

“I’m meeting him tonight,” Joe continued. “The man who helped me on the bus. We are going to get food together once he finishes work.” 

Hassan’s eyes widened and a small smile passed across his face. 

“Is he Muslim?” he asked.

“I mean, he’s white and called Nicky so chances are -” Joe cut himself off, recognising the glint in Hassan’s eyes, and laughed. “Right, I see what you are doing there,” he said, spinning around lazily on the chair, phone in his hand now. “Always trying to match-make me.” 

Hassan clutched a hand to his chest as if to say _who me?_

“We just want you to find a good husband, Yusuf,” Amir said. He appeared on the screen behind Hassan, wiping flour on his apron. “Not that he _has_ to be Muslim, right Hassan?” 

Hassan gave a small nod and raised an eyebrow. Joe scrubbed his hand across his face and sighed out of fond frustration. 

“I’m not going on a date with the nurse from the bus. He’s probably not gay and if he is there is _nothing_ to say that he will be interested in me.” 

Amir signaled at the screen as if he was scanning Yusuf up and down. 

“I mean you’ve got _all_ this going on. Any man with _eyes_ would be interested.” 

Hassan chuckled softly, his laugh came from deep in his chest. It was warm like his father used to laugh when Yusuf put on little plays as a child. Joe laughed with him with a twinge of sadness building in his chest. 

“Make sure you eat enough, Yusuf,” Hassan said. “Make sure this Nicky feeds you.” 

“I’ll miss Amir’s _harira_ tonight.” Joe thought of the rich tomato and lentil soup, medjool dates and soft fluffy flatbreads. His stomach growled. 

“The size of the pot he’s making there will be plenty for tomorrow as well.” Hassan laughed and Joe heard Amir also laughing behind him, somewhere else in the kitchen. “I can drop some off for you if you like.” 

“Oh no,” Joe said. “Don’t go to the trouble. I don’t know how long I’ll be, I’ll probably be finished before you do.” 

“I’ll bring some round. If you aren’t in I’ll leave it in a bag behind the plant pot on the porch. It’s still cool enough outside.” 

“Thank you.” Joe stretched in his chair. “Well, I should probably go. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“See you tomorrow. Enjoy the date.” Hassan winked and laughed again. Joe rolled his eyes. 

“It’s _not_ a date,” Joe insisted. 

Hassan just winked at him again. They both waved and Joe clicked off the video. 

He sighed and looked up at the clock across the classroom. Six-fifty. He still had about an hour until he was going to meet Nicolo. Butterflies danced in his stomach. Joe wasn’t sure if it was just the residual anxiety from the day or something else. _Was he_ _excited?_ He was. Even with the terrible circumstances, he was looking forward to seeing Nicky again. 

Joe picked another workbook off the pile of marking he had to do and began to slowly tick off the maths problems. He’d finish this, pray and then go to meet Nicky when he finished his shift. 

Not long to wait now - hopefully seeing Nicky would make him feel a little better. 

After he finished his shift, Nicky scrambled to get ready in the changing room. He stood in front of his locker, hopped into his jeans, quickly sprayed himself with some deodorant, and then pulled his t-shirt and fleece on over the top. He was already fifteen minutes late and had texted Joe in order to let him know. Joe had replied almost straight away with ‘Okay, I’m just outside the hospital - don’t rush’.

Nicky put his scrubs into the laundry bag, grabbed his backpack, and made to leave the changing rooms. He hovered in front of the mirror by the door and brushed his hair out of his face, trying to smooth down the errant strands. It was getting long. He should get a haircut. He thumbed at the bags under his eyes, darker now after four long shifts. Nicky went back to his hair, brushed it the other way with his fingers then stopped himself. This wasn’t a date. He didn’t need to look nice. After all, this was _just_ a meeting to make sure that Joe was okay. 

Nicky left the mirror and the changing room. He walked down the brightly lit corridor. _After all, Joe probably wasn’t even gay. Even if he was, he wasn’t looking for a relationship._ Nicky thought about earlier and how he had reacted when he saw Owain. _Maybe it was still too soon after Owain. What if he didn’t even know how to flirt anymore._ Nicky moved out of the way to let a porter pushing a patient in a bed go past and headed to the lifts. 

He pressed the button to go down to the ground floor of the hospital and headed towards the entrance. Once he was outside in the cool air, Nicky looked around to see Joe standing by the taxi rank. He was dressed the same as he was this morning, a grey jacket over a light blue jumper with a shirt underneath. Skinny cut trousers which were - Nicky looked him up and down - _very flattering_ in all the right places. Joe raised his hand to wave as Nicky approached. A smile broke out over his face. 

“Hi, Nicky,” Joe said, he looked a little awkward, hands shoved into his coat pockets. 

“Hi, Joe,” Nicky replied. 

“How was work?’

“Oh, fine,” Nicky fell into step beside Joe as they walked across the car park at the front of the hospital. “How are you?” 

“Better, I’m better.” Nicky could tell by the slight waver in Joe’s voice that he wasn’t really. 

“Where do you fancy going?” Joe asked as they crossed the road from the hospital. 

“You know what,” Nicky said. “I could eat a McDonald’s.” 

Joe broke into a laugh and Nicky found himself smiling. His laugh was warm and open and broad like stepping into a hug. If he could hear Joe laugh forever, he would be the happiest man alive. 

“Shall we go to Maccies then?” 

“I’ll never get why the Brits call it Maccies,” Nicky said. “But yes, I’d love a burger. At least in McDonald’s we can sit.” Nicky paused and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s open all night so nobody will kick us out and we can talk.” 

“Sound good,” Joe replied. 

“I’m not usually such a cheap date,” Nicky said suddenly then bit his lip. _Fuck_ , _what had he just said? Okay, play it cool. Play it cool._

Luckily, Joe just laughed his warm laugh again. It was enough to calm Nicky’s nerves. 

“I think after guiding me through CPR and basically picking me up off the floor afterwards, the least I can do is buy you a burger.” 

Nicky smiled. 

“Honestly, don’t worry,” he said. 

Joe held his hands up, as he did so, his left hand brushed ever so slightly over Nicky’s arm, electric shocks and goosebumps flared there. Nicky bit his lip again, harder this time. 

“No, no,” Joe said. “Please, let me.” 

“Alright then,” Nicky signaled the way. “Shall we go then?’ 

Joe nodded. 

“Yeah, let’s go.” 

As they walked side by side down the darkened streets lit by the neon signs of the shops and takeaways, Nicky wondered what it would be like to reach out and take Joe’s hand. He imagined them together, hand in hand. Maybe in the dream, it was snowing. Maybe it was Christmas, bright sparkling lights everywhere - a real rom-com moment. Or maybe it was summer, a warm night just starting to darken. Whenever, wherever, it was - his hand would be in Joe’s.

 _No._ _Don’t even think about it. This is not what tonight is about._

Nicky shoved his hand back into his coat pocket and clenched it tightly into a fist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Va te faire foutre_ translates as 'Go fuck yourself'
> 
> Let's see what happens next time on their 'date'...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I really hope you enjoyed this fic <3 As always all comments and critiques are welcomed - I love to hear from you all. 
> 
> Updates should be pretty regular. I don't have a set schedule, but hoping for around weekly <3


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